PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

HOUSE OF COMMONS
OFFICIAL REPORT
GENERAL COMMITTEES

Public Bill Committee

DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL

First Sitting

Tuesday 29 October 2019

(Morning)

CONTENTS
Programme motion agreed to.
Written evidence (Reporting to the House) motion agreed to.
Motion to sit in private agreed to.
Examination of witnesses.
Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o’clock.

PBC (Bill 002) 2019 - 2020

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not later than

Saturday 2 November 2019

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1 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019 Domestic Abuse Bill 2

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: † SIR DAVID AMESS, DAVID HANSON

† Atkins, Victoria (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for the Home Department)
† Coaker, Vernon (Gedling) (Lab)
† Dakin, Nic (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
† Graham, Luke (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
† Harris, Carolyn (Swansea East) (Lab)
† Hughes, Eddie (Walsall North) (Con)
† Jardine, Christine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
† Johnson, Diana (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
† Jones, Mr Marcus (Nuneaton) (Con)
† Keegan, Gillian (Chichester) (Con)
† Merriman, Huw (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
† Morton, Wendy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for Justice)
† Newton, Sarah (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
† Norris, Alex (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
† Saville Roberts, Liz (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
† Scully, Paul (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
† Smith, Eleanor (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Joanna Dodd, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Nicole Jacobs, Designate Domestic Abuse Commissioner

Deputy Chief Constable (West Midlands Police) Louisa Rolfe, National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on domestic
abuse, National Police Chiefs’ Council
3 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS Domestic Abuse Bill 4

Public Bill Committee Date Time Witness

Tuesday 29 October Until no later than Age UK; Respect

Tuesday 29 October 2019 5.00 pm
Thursday 31 October Until no later than Women’s Aid
12.30 pm Federation of
(Morning) England; Refuge;
SafeLives
Thursday 31 October Until no later than Local Government
[SIR DAVID AMESS in the Chair] 1.00 pm Association
Thursday 31 October Until no later than Crisis; Giles
Domestic Abuse Bill 2.45 pm Peaker, Anthony
Gold Solicitors
Thursday 31 October Until no later than Imkaan; End
9.25 am 4.00 pm Violence Against
The Chair: Before we begin, I have a few preliminary Women Coalition;
announcements. Please switch your electronic devices to Southall Black
Sisters; Cris
silent. I would certainly like tea or coffee, but the rules McCurley, Ben
are set in stone and we would have to agree that through Hoare Bell LLP
the Chairman of Ways and Means, so I am afraid that, Thursday 31 October Until no later than Amnesty
at the moment, you cannot have tea or coffee. I do not 5.00 pm International UK;
really want to tell anyone off; I am afraid you are just Hestia
going to have to deal with water.
We will first consider the programme motion on the (3) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee
shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 37;
amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to Schedule 1; Clauses 38 to 78; Schedule 2; Clauses 79
enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, to 86; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining
and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about proceedings on the Bill;
our questions before the oral evidence session. In view (4) the proceedings on the Bill shall (so far as not
of the timetable, shall we just get on with it? I call the previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion
Minister to move the programme motion, which was at 5.00 pm on Thursday 21 November.—(Victoria
discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee. Atkins.)
Ordered, Resolved,
That— That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for
9.25 am on Tuesday 29 October) meet— publication.—(Victoria Atkins.)
(a) at 2.30 pm on Tuesday 29 October;
The Chair: Copies of written evidence that the Committee
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 31 October;
receives will be made available in the Committee Room.
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 5 November; If there are any complaints, please direct them to our
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 7 November; wonderful Clerk.
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 12 November; Resolved,
(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 14 November; That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence
(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 19 November; is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the
(h) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday witnesses are admitted.—(Victoria Atkins.)
21 November;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance
9.28 am
with the following Table: The Committee deliberated in private.

TABLE Examination of Witness

Nicole Jacobs gave evidence.
Date Time Witness
9.29 am
Tuesday 29 October Until no later than Nicole Jacobs,
10.55 am Designate Q1 The Chair: Before I call the first Member to ask a
Domestic Abuse question, I remind all Members—I am sure they do not
Commissioner need reminding—that everything must be related to the
Tuesday 29 October Until no later than National Police Bill; we should not wander beyond its scope. We should
11.25 am Chiefs’ Council also stick to our timings. For this session we have until
Tuesday 29 October Until no later than Her Majesty’s 10.55 am. Secondly, I ask Members to declare any
3.00 pm Inspectors of relevant interests before they ask their first question. I
Constabulary cannot think that any Member does have an interest.
Tuesday 29 October Until no later than Nazir Afzal, Nicole, would you please tell the Committee—not in
3.30 pm National Adviser huge detail—something about yourself ?
to the Welsh
Government
Nicole Jacobs: Good morning, and thank you
for having me. I am your new designate Domestic
Tuesday 29 October Until no later than Action for
4.00 pm Children Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales. By way of
background, I have worked in the domestic abuse sector
5 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
for more than 20 years—in the US at the very start of
my career, but I moved to the UK about 20 years ago
—and have worked in a variety of local and national
domestic abuse charities.
The Chair: Splendid. You are projecting your voice
well—we can all hear you—so that is a good start.
Q2 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
the Home Department (Victoria Atkins): It is a pleasure
to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Before
I start the questioning, for the sake of completeness, I
will say that I used to practise as a criminal barrister
and prosecuted for the Crown Prosecution Service and
other prosecuting agencies.
Ms Jacobs, congratulations on being the designate
Domestic Abuse Commissioner. You have explained
your expertise and experience in this area. Could you
please help us with your thoughts on how you see the
role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner? What do
you hope to achieve?
Nicole Jacobs: I was attracted to apply for the role at
the start of the year because I feel, having worked for
many years, that there is a real need for public leadership
and an independent commissioner to hold the Government
to account and look at the provision of service across
England and Wales. You will have heard the term
postcode lottery, and you will probably hear it many
times in the next few sittings. I have worked in the field
for more than 20 years and know what it feels like for
people who are subject to domestic abuse, how services
change and how the response of statutory services will
differ from area to area.
My vision for the role is to instil a co-ordinated
community response to domestic abuse, where essentially
you have specialist services—we all know that victims of
domestic abuse say time and time again that such services
make a life-changing difference, and that has been well
evaluated—with the survivor voice at the centre of the
response; and where all entities, including housing,
health, the criminal justice system and community and
religious groups, are doing their part to address domestic
abuse properly, as they should.
That is why I loved the job description set out for this
role, which is about mapping provision and looking
at our findings from homicide reviews. I have just
come from an organisation that, sadly, has chaired over
60 homicide reviews. The idea of co-ordinating the
learning from those reviews highly motivates me, as well
as other aspects of the co-ordinated response.
Tangibly, what I would like to set out and do, as
quickly as possible, is to get on with that mapping and
really help to shine a light not only on where practice is
lacking but on where there is good practice, because we
need to emulate that and really push for that to be much
more common across England and Wales.
Q3 Victoria Atkins: Thank you; that was most
helpful. Your current title is designate Domestic Abuse
Commissioner, because you will not possess statutory
powers until the Bill becomes an Act. To help the
Committee to put the framework in place—I suspect
you may be asked questions about this—what are your
thoughts on the statutory powers that you are given
under the Bill?
Domestic Abuse Bill 6
Nicole Jacobs: I have been in post for a month, and
one of the things that has struck me already—I was not
fully expecting the breadth of this—is how much survivors
and people who work in the sector and elsewhere have
embraced the idea of this role. I understand the idea of
public leadership in the role and what that means to
people, but the powers that the Bill will give my office
are critical.
I am an expert in domestic abuse, not in commissioners’
powers, but I have done a bit of looking around and
talking to other commissioners and I have had in-depth
talks at the Home Office about this. Essentially, I feel
that the powers in the Bill are fit for purpose, as far as I
understand them. Obviously, I will defer to you if you
think they should be strengthened, but what I like about
them as they are set out is the ability to table reports to
the Home Secretary and Parliament, and the timeframe
in which the Government must respond if my office has
made recommendations in those reports. I know from
having talked to other commissioners that that is very
important. The ability to redact information in my
reports is limited; there have to be compelling reasons.
You know all those details, but the powers are quite
well set out and have been well thought through, as far
as I am concerned. Having said that, more power is fine
with me, so if you, in the course of your duties, come
across things that you feel would improve the independence
and power of my office, I would certainly welcome that.
Q4 Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): Good morning
and welcome. It is an absolute pleasure to have you
here. I am interested to hear you say that you would
welcome more powers. An issue for me, at this moment
in time, is whether you need more time. I am really
concerned about the fact that the role is part time, and
there is definitely an opportunity for us to look at that. I
am offering you a full-time job here.
Nicole Jacobs: I would love it. I have said from the
very start that I recognise that this is a huge role. I am
certainly 100% committed and passionate, and I would
welcome working more. I will obviously be building up
a team, which will sit around me in my office. I am
slowly starting to recruit for it, and I will feel better
when I have got it. I always try to point out to people
that they should not worry about the fact that there is
not a team sitting around the commissioner. There is
resource there, but of course I believe that it is more
than a part-time role.
I understand from my conversations with the Home
Office, which is my host, that there is a real openness to
doing that. People made that clear on Second Reading—I
was listening in Parliament—so I do not worry about
that so much. Once I have been in post a little longer, I
can make a decision if I believe I need more time, but
I would certainly welcome your support on that. I would
really like that.
Q5 Carolyn Harris: You have had an opportunity to
look at the Bill. What are your thoughts on the gender
definition within it?
Nicole Jacobs: I am of the view that there is a
gendered nature to domestic abuse. Going back to the
homicide reviews that I was talking about earlier, three
fourths of them are intimate partners or former intimate
partners—that is highly gendered. A fourth of those
7 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
homicides are adult child to family—again, that is
highly gendered. That does not mean that there are not
male victims of domestic abuse. Both those things can
be true. In my area—I have just been working in central
London—there were 4,000 women who came to services
in just one tri-borough area last year. That is a lot. The
facts speak for themselves.
I appreciate that your dilemma is that you want to
write inclusive legislation that is clear that domestic
abuse can happen to anyone. Where I have eventually
fallen on this is that there is strength in the statutory
definition in wanting the gendered nature of domestic
abuse to be very prominent in the statutory guidance. If
you can all figure out a way to make the law gendered
and still address the breadth of people who suffer
domestic abuse, I would welcome that. My understanding
is that what you would like, and what the Joint Committee
on the draft Bill looked at, is to have gender-neutral
language in the law, underpinned by much more informed
statutory guidance related to the gendered nature. I
hope that makes sense.
Carolyn Harris: That is perfect.
Nicole Jacobs: I am sure we all recognise the gendered
nature of domestic abuse.
Q6 Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con): It is a
pleasure to see you here today, as it was to see you in the
Gallery. I thought it was terrific that you sat through
the whole debate.
Nicole Jacobs: I thought you were all terrific.
Sarah Newton: You made a compelling description in
your opening remarks about the landscape of community
services and specialist services commissioned by the
NHS, local authorities, children’s services, and police
and crime commissioners. I am delighted that you have
picked mapping this provision of services as a key
priority. Are you also looking at prevention services? We
know that, unfortunately, if children grow up in a home
where they witness domestic abuse and violence, they
are far more likely to become perpetrators or victims.
Given the scale of the challenge—we have heard your
reflections on time—will the budget of £1 million be
enough to undertake such a mammoth mapping exercise?
What role does sharing best practice have and how
would you undertake that partnership working, given
the range of agencies involved in providing services?
Nicole Jacobs: I will take on prevention first. You are
exactly right, and we will all differ in our views of what
we would undertake if we were preventing domestic
abuse. Some of us would be interested in a public health
campaign. Some would be interested in work within
schools. Some might say that we need to do a lot to
intervene early, so that we are educating all manner of
frontline services about how they can prevent this. With
any issue as complex as domestic abuse, it must be all
three, and we must do all that.
Although I endorse the idea of a public campaign, I
am aware that we would have to have the services and
the breadth of development and understanding to underpin
that. If we raise the expectations of the public—if we
want them to understand that we are there and they can
reach out for help—we need to have the help in place. I
can see a role in helping to shape some of those prevention
Domestic Abuse Bill 8
activities, but that responsibility rightfully sits within
Government. My office, for example, cannot run a
prevention campaign, but I really endorse the idea of
helping to support the Government to do that.
In respect of my budget, I understand the scope of
the staff team I can hire. I understand that I can have
roughly 13 staff members with that budget. I can anticipate
what I think they could do in terms of analysis, stakeholder
engagement and policy work. As the Committee hears
further evidence, I encourage you to be mindful of the
fact that there are a lot of ideas and discussions about
what else my office might do. Please be mindful of the
fact that if there are any additional responsibilities, they
will need to come with additional resource.
I am a bit concerned about being able to do the
breadth of that mapping. I would have to depend on
Departments sharing with me the information that they
already have, and charities in our sector doing the same.
I do not intend to start from scratch. I know there has
been a lot of work, and I would like to have access to
that information and make sense of it, and to use it as
part of the mapping. There are some efficiencies in
that way.
In terms of my background and the breadth of what
gets mapped, which was the last part of your question,
the organisation I have just come from is about promoting
a co-ordinated community response. We have specialist
courts, and we had health-related and housing-related
work. I feel that I would have a level of precision in
terms of knowing what I would be looking for. You are
right to say it is a huge endeavour, but there are definitely
areas of work where we know what the practice ought
to be. We do not have to worry about figuring that out;
we just need to know who is doing it and who is not,
and why not. With the breadth of that, there is a bit of
expertise that I can bring that will help to make that a
little more precise and efficient.
Q7 Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab):
Welcome, and congratulations on your role. I want to
ask you whether the fact that the advertised role was
part time was one of the reasons you applied for it. I
asked the Minister about this in the House of Commons
yesterday, and she said that she had had advice from
recruitment consultants that we would get a better
breadth of applicants if we had a part-time post. Is that
why you applied?
Nicole Jacobs: To be perfectly honest, I applied because
of the job description. I was very motivated by the job
description. In fact, I looked at that more than I looked
at the part-time nature of the role. I would have questioned
it a bit, but then thought, “Well, there’ll be lots of
full-time staff on my team.” I was very relieved in my
initial conversations that it was likely, if I wanted to
spend more time—
Q8 Diana Johnson: You would like it to be full time.
Nicole Jacobs: I can imagine that if I were at a
different stage in life, with different responsibilities, I
might find that attractive. Right now, from my current
thinking about it, I would love to be doing it full time
but it did not dissuade me when I saw it was part time. I
just assumed I would have to work around that.
Q9 Diana Johnson: I wonder whether you have read
the prelegislative scrutiny report on the draft Domestic
Abuse Bill, because it was clear from its recommendations
9 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
that there was unanimity that the issue of accountability
was not properly addressed in the way the commissioner
is accountable to the Secretary of State in the Home
Office. Their budgets and staff are set by the Secretary
of State in the Home Office. I wonder what your thoughts
are on that.
Kevin Hyland, who was a commissioner with whom I
am sure you are very familiar, gave evidence that the
Secretary of State would have too much control over
the commissioner’s budgets, the staff employed and the
content of the commissioner’s reports. I note that you
said at the beginning that you wanted to be a publicly
independent commissioner and hold the Government
to account. What is your view on what Kevin Hyland
said?
Nicole Jacobs: Obviously, I have really considered
that, because the last thing I want to do is stop the job
that I love in the charity sector and come to a role in
which I would not be able to exercise my independence
as much as I would like. In the ebb and flow of the work
on the Bill, I looked at a framework document just last
week that set it out more clearly. I am sure you will have
sight of that in the Committee. I feel quite confident in
the way I have negotiated thus far with officers at the
Home Office, in terms of asserting different changes
and things that I would like to be clarified. I have felt
confident in the way that that has been conducted to
date.
I would highlight that the budget is set out year to
year. My view, as I have said to the Home Office, is that
if I have a three-year plan and my term is for three
years, I should have assurance over the budget over that
time. I will have people working for me, for example,
who will be working on things, so I would rather have
the assurance of three years at a time rather than year
to year. Again, I am highlighting that to you not because
I am concerned about it but because we are discussing
that now. In other words, I have felt assured by the
reactions of the Home Office to date, in terms of how I
will conduct myself independently.
Q10 Diana Johnson: In terms of being able to be
accountable, do you think it would be better for your
role to sit within the Cabinet Office rather than the
Home Office?
Nicole Jacobs: I have considered that as well. I have
worked in this sector for many years. There is expertise
in many Departments, obviously, but the Home Office
has traditionally been the centre of activity, not just for
criminal justice related work but for good leadership in
terms of violence against women and domestic abuse, in
any number of areas. There is a certain level of expertise
within the Home Office of which I am appreciative; I
have less experience with the Cabinet Office. I know
people who work there. I would defer to your view, but I
feel confident about the hosting at the Home Office.
I hope I am not naive, but I fully intend to be
independent. I do not intend to wilfully disagree if I do
not disagree, but I do not feel hindered in any way in the
process to date, in terms of my independence.
Q11 Diana Johnson: I wanted to ask how you feel you
will be accountable to Parliament. This is a parliamentary
Committee, so how will you do that?
Nicole Jacobs: By tabling reports to Parliament and
annual reports. One of my biggest regrets about only
being in post for a month is that I have not been able to
Domestic Abuse Bill 10
get around and speak to many parliamentarians yet,
and there has been all this activity related to the Bill. I
feel that I would be accountable to Parliament in the
way that I would table information and reports to
Parliament, and be clear about the work of my office,
what we are finding and what we are doing about it. I
thoroughly understand how accountable I am in this
role, and I would welcome any ways that you wish to
improve that.
Q12 Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con): I, too, would
like to congratulate you on your new role. There are
such high expectations of this role. As the comments so
far show, this is now the time to make sure that we set
out the role so that it is set up to be successful.
I listened to what you said about mapping and
co-ordinating support services to eliminate the postcode
lottery across England and Wales, and to make sure
that we have a clear idea about what services are there.
We know that there are big gaps in services for survivors
and children. It is a massive brief. Like many Committee
members, I have concerns about whether this can be a
part-time role or whether you will end up doing it three
times over. This is going to take up a lot of time.
You have a staff of 13. Could you give us a bit more
colour about what that staff looks like? How are you
going to eat this elephant, in a way? It is a massive thing
to do. What can we expect? Perhaps our expectations
are too high. What can we expect in the first 100 days or
so? Now is the time to say and to give us all the feeling
about whether the role ought to be considered to be full
time, whether the budget is sufficient and whether you
have the right staff. We want to make sure that you are
successful and that we get it right. We do not want
something where we all come back later and think,
“That’s disappointing.”
Nicole Jacobs: In terms of the first 100 days, to give a
little more colour, I would expect to be hiring a chief of
staff next week and some element of communications
specialism within the office, but primarily having analysts,
policy leads and officers. For me, having a stakeholder
engagement post is very important in order to feel like I
am doing as much as I can to reach out to frontline
services and individual people, and to have built up an
advisory board, which would include people who have
been subject to domestic abuse.
I agree that there is a lot to do and a lot of breadth of
work in that. One thing that would help me is for you to
consider the statutory duty for services. If my job is to
help shine a light on what practice ought to be out there
and end the postcode lottery, I cannot do that on my
own. One of the things you will be thinking about in
this Committee is the statutory duty for accommodation-
based services, which I wholly endorse, and I congratulate
the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local
Government on all the work and leadership on that. I
believe that duty should be expanded to the breadth of
frontline services for domestic abuse.
You will understand that housing-related services will
excellently cover refuge and those types of associated
services, but there is a whole breadth of other services
such as community-based independent domestic abuse
advisers. A significant majority of domestic abuse services
that we call specialist services do not fall within the duty
as it is set out. That would be a great help to me as the
commissioner, because that would strengthen the services
11 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
that must be provided. In some ways, the underpinning
of that would be a huge boost to not only my role but
the provision of services in England and Wales.
I would love to give you a precise budget increase that
I would like, but I have been in role for a month and I do
not have my full strategic plan and the costings set out. I
would feel a bit embarrassed to come to you and say,
“Could you provide more resource, but I can’t really tell
you the strategic plan and exactly how it will fall out?”.
I feel I have the resource now to get started, certainly,
and to make headway. My understanding of the framework
document, which I would love for you to take a really
good look at and consider, is that as that strategy is set
by my office, there is a process of negotiation related to
what resource I need. I would really appreciate anything
you could do that would strengthen my hand in terms
of what I can do at that point.
Q13 Gillian Keegan: Could you give us a little more
information on stakeholder engagement, as that will be
a key part? How do you see that playing out and who
are the key stakeholders?
Nicole Jacobs: In my mind, the absolute stakeholders
are the adults and children suffering domestic abuse.
They would be first and foremost in my mind. I know
that sounds possibly clichéd, but in every decision I
make and everything I do, that would be the first
thought I have—what the implications are, what is
needed, what people are saying about services. It would
be the first thing I consider.
I will not go into all my thoughts about this, but it is
difficult to consider how we would do that properly.
How do we engage? We are talking about millions of
people, so I would like to think carefully about how to
do that in a meaningful way, in terms of advisers and
whatnot.
I brought with me something that I was struck by—of
course I cannot put my fingers on it right now, but I do
have it somewhere. I know several of you were at the
Law in the Making launch in Parliament last week, and
there was an amazing booklet that set out priorities that
were set by survivors. It is an excellent example of the
careful bringing in of the views of stakeholders. I fully
intend to take every one of the recommendations and, if
they are not addressed in the Bill or the statutory
guidance, to use them in some way in my mapping.
I know this is a long answer, but it is worth you
understanding that my view of stakeholder engagement
is much broader than that. Going back to that co-ordinated
response, where is health? We talk about the health
response to domestic abuse, and one of the
recommendations from the Law in the Making booklet
was about mental health services. There is a lot to do to
engage stakeholders, such as mental health trusts, acute
hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, and
in every area that is being mapped, a whole host of
stakeholders need to be engaged fully and to understand
where the practice is, where their practice should be,
and what we expect. I will aim to do that.
Q14 Gillian Keegan: Thank you; that was a helpful
response. Will you tell me one last thing? In a lot of the
discussion, there was clearly a great deal of difficulty
with the children of survivors—in finding school places,
in considering the children and with the support services
for children, who are also survivors of domestic abuse. I
Domestic Abuse Bill 12
am conscious that this role is massive, but how do you
see it fitting in with them as stakeholders and with the
provision of services for them?
Nicole Jacobs: That is why I feel strongly about the
broadening of the statutory duty. One of the things
that I want to point out is that when you hear about
refuges or community-based services, all those people
are serving the needs of children. They are the people
who are finding the school places and thinking about
advocating to CAMHS—child and adolescent mental
health services—for example, about waiting lists and all
sorts of things.
That aside, there is still a distinct lack of services that
address the child directly. There are the needs of the
child and then what services a child in their own right
should have, such as counselling support to understand
and make sense of the trauma they have suffered. Those
services are seriously lacking because in the local authority,
at the local level, it is the crisis-related services that are
prioritised for funding.
Believe anyone who gives you evidence on the lack of
services for children, because it is true to say that it is
very unusual to find an area with genuine nice provision
and breadth of services for children in that respect.
Again, that is why we need to be clearer about where
that is happening, so that we can learn from it—how do
they fund it, or which partners come together at the
local authority level to fund it? Even better, that should
be included in the breadth of a duty that we would
expect everyone to have. That would make things
significantly better.
Q15 Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op):
Welcome, Nicole. I have just two things. To continue the
theme of mapping, it has always seemed to me that
there is a real challenge with refuge or accommodation-
based support because a constituent of mine, for obvious
reasons, is as likely to need somewhere outside Nottingham
tonight as inside Nottingham. There is no connection
between the commissioning decision made in, say,
Birmingham and that individual back in Nottingham,
in the way that there would be for another service
commissioned through the local authority. I know you
are in the early stages of this, but have you had much
chance to consider that issue, perhaps drawing on your
previous experience? How is the health of the national
network of refuges at the moment? Do you intend to
establish that in your role?
Nicole Jacobs: My colleagues at Women’s Aid, whom
I trust, would say that we are turning away one in three
people who seek a refuge. I know what it is like to try
to find a place in a refuge—I have many years’ experience
in frontline services and I have been at the end of the
phone on a Friday night trying to find a place for
someone sitting in front of me who has nowhere to go. I
welcome the establishment of a solid fundamental duty
to ensure that that provision is in place.
I like the way that MHCLG has consulted many
stakeholders about having a board that would include
specialist services that map and think carefully about
the priorities in any area. All those things would end the
idea of, “I am funding something that is not for ‘my
residents’,” which has been the attitude from some,
although not all, local authorities. Some local authorities
have had an attitude of, “Why are we providing this
service when it is not our residents who are attending?”,
but if everyone did that there would be no place to go.
13 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
Some of the measures being introduced will address
that in part, but I stress that things such as provision for
migrant women or people with no recourse to public
funds—I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when you
are desperately trying to find suitable, safe accommodation
for someone in those circumstances. I am sure you will
hear a lot of evidence about that, so I will not go into
great detail, but we must seek to improve those things
through the Bill in terms of our duties. I do not see it
happening any other way.
Local authorities are very constrained. For example,
even when you go to a local authority with great solid
information and say, “This is the percentage increase in
our referrals; this is the breadth of what we are not
doing,” the response is not, “Okay, you have given me
the evidence, here we go.” Usually, it is, “Let’s have a
10% cut because we are cutting all services right now.”
That is the reality out there, and that is why there has
been such a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of a duty,
which I feel needs to be extended.
Q16 Alex Norris: Pivoting to recruitment, the Home
Affairs Committee heard from Kevin Hyland, just before
he left his role as anti-slavery commissioner. We asked
him about the challenges and what he knew then that he
did not know at the beginning. He said that one challenge
of being in the Home Office is that, quite rightly, it has
exceptionally rigorous recruitment processes because of
the access to exceptionally sensitive material, including
on organised crime and counter-terrorism. All that
makes abundant sense, but it means that recruitment of
staff is difficult, and he was taking up to nine months
to bring in members of staff. You are building a team of
13 people from scratch. How is that looking so far? Do
you have any of those anxieties? Has anything changed?
Is there a streamlined process specifically for you?
Nicole Jacobs: Yes, it is quite different. I am used to
working in an organisation where if I wanted to recruit
someone, I could go to my office, write a job description,
put in an ad, and it would all be done. It is a bit of a
shock. There has been some real learning from Kevin
Hyland. The team in the Home Office that has been
helping me get set up—I have had some support—has
really got ahead of that and the recruitment, which has
been great. I feel it has helped to manage my expectations
a bit, but it has got a few key posts in place. To be
honest, if the team had not done that—it was a courtesy
to get me off to a good start—I would be doing it now,
and instead of interviewing next week I would be
interviewing in three months’ time.
I understand what Kevin Hyland was saying, and it
reminds me of something that I would like to point out.
I was madly reviewing all the documents in preparation
for coming before you—although you are very friendly
and not as intimidating as I had thought—and one of
the things that I noted was this thing about recruitment.
It says that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner would
approve the recruitment. When I read that wording, I
thought, “This is my staff team, and I will select it. If it
is not me, it will be my chief of staff.” I would not
approve the recruitment; I would be doing it. Again, I
do not anticipate that I will not be able to negotiate that
in the framework agreement, but it is something that I
noticed yesterday, and I thought, “Actually, it should be
worded to be really clear that I or someone on my team
will be recruiting, as it is my staff team.” I will be
advocating for that small change in the wording.
Domestic Abuse Bill 14
Q17 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Justice (Wendy Morton): Good morning, Nicole, and
congratulations on your new post. I want to focus on
one particular group of stakeholders: victims and their
children. I believe they are at the heart of the Bill; I
wonder what your thoughts are on that. What do you
feel are the right levers for improving the response to
domestic abuse for victims and their children?
Nicole Jacobs: Without saying some of what I have
said already, I think it is necessary to have the basic
services on a very solid footing, in terms of the provision
of funding, and to include that for all survivors, no
matter whether they are disabled, LGBT or migrants.
Frankly, to be the bearer of bad news, there is massive
room for improvement in every direction. That would
be central to my thoughts about what those levers
would need to be—the levers that would enable the
funding to be settled and much more stable. Later, you
will hear from Jo Todd about male victims and perpetrators
of domestic abuse, and I would endorse all those things.
It is not as if people who experience domestic abuse
line up at the specialist service door or call. They are
most likely to receive support through the nurse, the
housing officer, the neighbour or the community leader.
There will be a pathway to support. It is interesting to
think about those levers individually. What does housing
need to do? What does the criminal justice system need
to do? I am a huge advocate of specialist courts so that
when people access the criminal justice system for redress,
the system really pays attention to them as a witness.
The levers are different for different types of service and
different pathways into support. I know that is not a
very succinct answer, but there are many things we can
do in every area that would lever support. Some would
not need to be contained in the Bill; some would rightly
sit in the statutory guidance alongside the Bill. An exciting
aspect of this process is strengthening that guidance. I
have had sight of an initial draft and was pleased to
consider what this would be like and what kind of effect
it would have, once it was in the statutory guidance.
Q18 Wendy Morton: In terms of working with others,
we obviously have the Victims’ Commissioner and the
Children’s Commissioner, and we also have the Welsh
Government national advisers’ role. How would you see
your work linking in with them, or any collaboration
with them? How do you see it all not just knitting
together, but working together in this space?
Nicole Jacobs: I always really admired Vera Baird,
the Victims’ Commissioner. She has been quite active in
this process and you will be hearing various things from
her colleagues who work with her. In a lot of ways, the
synergy with her office is quite clear to me, because of
the breadth of her understanding and her background.
I feel the same about my initial conversations with the
national advisers—I met with them yesterday—and the
Children’s Commissioner and others. Technically, there
will be a memorandum of understanding that will set
out and make clear the delineation of priority, duties
and how we will co-ordinate. Practically speaking, we
are off to a good start: I feel really enthusiastic about
how we will work together and think about really
practical ways to work so that we are not stepping on
each other. There is plenty to do and if anything I do
not think there will be any stepping on toes; there will
be a lot of co-ordinating work and prioritising of what
we would like to see done. That should work quite well.
15 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
One thing I find is that there has been a lot of
discussion about the breadth of violence against women
and girls, and that could sit in certain aspects of what I
will do but it could also sit well with the Victims’
Commissioner and other commissioners. There is a lot
to do to co-ordinate that work, but I feel confident that
will happen.
Q19 Wendy Morton: Just one more quick question.
You touched on the work of Jo Todd and we talked
earlier about the definition of domestic abuse and about
gender neutrality. How do you see your role in terms of
supporting male victims of domestic abuse?
Nicole Jacobs: I see it in a fairly similar way, in terms
of feeling that I would want people to feel I was
championing and amplifying their voice, their views
and their needs. I would not see it as wholly different in
that way. For example, in many aspects of my career
over many years I have worked with male victims,
particularly in health settings, where perhaps you would
be more likely to have people come forward or be able
to intervene early. I would see it in a very similar way,
but that does not mean it would be the same. We have to
realise that there are all sorts of intersections. We have
to appreciate the differences: male victims may not need
the same provision of services or types of services. I
would be open to having these conversations and
understanding what would be individually needed for
any number of groups, including male victims.
Q20 Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West)
(Lab): Good morning, Nicole, and congratulations on
your role. How much importance do you place on
diversity in your recruitment, and within your department
and the work you are doing there?
Nicole Jacobs: I highly prioritise it, partly because I
understand that people who are subject to domestic
abuse are very diverse. We say that it is a gendered
crime, but all women are not the same. There are older
women, disabled women, lesbian women—there are all
sorts of people that I would want my office to represent.
I really want a diverse range of people represented in
my office and being engaged by my office. Put simply, I
would absolutely be committed to that, because we have
learned in the past that sometimes we have geared our
services and responses towards people who might be
similar to those running the service.
Over the years, we have learned that we must have a
more diverse service pathway. For example, in the area
of London where I come from, instead of commissioning
one service, there is a partnership of nine services. It is a
partnership and it is commissioned as one. That has
allowed for smaller, community-based BME services to
thrive and be part of the service framework. That is the
kind of thing I would really like to see more of and to
be encouraged.
There are unintended consequences of promoting the
provision of service. The worry is that larger charities
will come into the frame and provide more generic
services. People who have been subject to domestic
abuse tell us that they want many pathways and to
know that there are people in particular communities
whom they could approach. I am a huge advocate of
making sure that we do not do anything that would
make small charities even more fragile in that way.
Domestic Abuse Bill 16
Q21 Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con): You
will be aware from listening to the Second Reading
debate that there was discussion as to whether the
definition should pay regard to the fact that women are
much more likely to be victims or survivors of domestic
abuse than men. I thought that was more a statement of
fact, but I could see the argument that that would help
to ensure that providers or funders would weight provision
according to that same proportion. Will your office and
powers allow you to investigate and ensure that providers
are providing on a proportionate basis when it comes to
gender?
Nicole Jacobs: I think so, because the approach is
very much based on the idea of mapping and understanding
needs. Anyone who is doing that properly will understand
this gendered nature. What I want to get across and
achieve is, at the very least, a prominent statement
about that in the statutory guidance, because that would
have an influence and would be something tangible to
point towards. It does not happen in every single place,
but it is not unusual for services to be commissioned in
such a way that people think: “Well, we have to take a
gender-neutral approach, so that is not fair, so it has to
be a much more generic service.” That flies in the face of
all that we know is likely to work.
I feel comfortable with what you describe. I would
very much welcome your views on whether you think it
should be in the law versus the statutory guidance. At
the very least, it has to be prominently put in the
statutory guidance. A lot of the mechanisms that are
being promoted in the statutory duty, such as the mapping
and multi-agency planning of services, should, I hope,
address that as well, if done properly.
Q22 Huw Merriman: May I ask a supplementary
question? You talk about the guidance; excuse my
ignorance—I should perhaps have known this—but in
your role how much input will you have in writing the
guidance?
Nicole Jacobs: I have been shown the guidance and I
had a session last week where I was able to suggest
changes. I would like to think the changes will all be
there the next time I see the draft, but it is in process
right now and I think the idea is that the guidance will
be published by the time the Bill passes. I am perhaps
being a bit trusting, but I believe that I will have input.
As long as I have made my case strongly, and it is fair
and clear, I do not see any reason why my input would
not be in the guidance.
Q23 Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC):
Congratulations on your recent appointment. I have
two questions on the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom
and devolution divergence. I will start with Northern
Ireland, although I appreciate that you are the commissioner
for England and Wales. The Joint Committee report
stated that it was unacceptable for people in Northern
Ireland to be denied the same level of domestic abuse
protection as those elsewhere in the UK because of the
lack of a Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly. Do
you believe the Government’s response as it stands to be
satisfactory? In the present circumstances, do you have
any role whatsoever in relation to Northern Ireland?
Nicole Jacobs: No, in the present circumstances I do
not. That does not mean that I am not interested. I am
the type of person who would be very interested in the
17 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
services needed—all that we have discussed—in Northern
Ireland; they would be needed anywhere. As for raising
the quality and provision of services, my assumption
would be that that all stands for Northern Ireland, but
in terms of what I have been hired for and what I am
currently doing, it is for England and Wales. It would be
entirely up to you potentially to change that.
Q24 Liz Saville Roberts: That leads me seamlessly to
my next question, which is about Wales. I appreciate
that Wendy Morton mentioned the adviser to the Welsh
Government, who is giving evidence to us this afternoon.
The Joint Committee made a recommendation on reporting
to the Senedd—Wales’s Parliament—and a duty to
consult. Of course, Wales has the Violence against
Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales)
Act 2015. Here we have an instance of devolution
divergence, given that housing, education, health and
local authorities are all devolved. How do you see your
role interacting with Welsh Ministers as well as in
accountability to the Senedd?
Nicole Jacobs: If am being totally honest, I am still
working that out. One of the conversations I had with
the national advisers yesterday was precisely about that
so that I would fully understand what is currently
happening in Wales, which is quite impressive in terms
of the structure of legislation; there is a lot to learn.
Some of what I was doing was listening and hearing
their experiences from the last two years in post and
what they know of from before that. I am sure you will
hear about that today.
I asked the national advisers, quite openly, where
they see the potential for us to work together, and
obviously they thought that particularly in the criminal
justice or court systems there are lots of ways we can
work together in joined-up efforts, but I would be
respectful of the notion that many duties are devolved.
There is a lot of progress. If anything, there is a lot of
learning to do on the agenda in Wales. The overarching
duty of Government has been to ask and act—I am
sure you will hear evidence about that—which is very
impressive, as is the headway they have made. The
advisers were talking to me yesterday about how many
thousands of frontline workers have been trained in
Wales. The proportion of Government Ministers who
have been trained in Wales is extremely impressive. I
would want to be cautious. I would want to plan with
them essentially what we can learn but also what exactly
I should do, because I would not want to do anything
that would disrupt those structures.
Q25 Liz Saville Roberts: Justice is not devolved to
Wales, yet many of these critical services are, and you
are answerable to the Home Office. Do you feel that
there should be answerability to Wales, given the critical
nature of those services, which are devolved, and the
fact that criminal justice over-straddles that?
Nicole Jacobs: I understand what you are saying. In
other words, would I welcome the idea, for the issues
that I would predominantly be working on, of answerability
to Wales or Welsh Ministers? Of course, any mechanism
that is appropriate to do that would be important to me.
In fact, yesterday the national advisers were saying that
they really welcomed the idea that I would be meeting
the breadth of Ministers in Wales. They were not very
territorial about that; they liked the idea that, once
Domestic Abuse Bill 18
things have settled down, we will find ways to work
together. There is obviously some resource that I can
bring, in terms of things that they would like to get
done. Again, I would be very cautious to learn exactly
what is happening before setting out some kind of plan,
not knowing how all of it co-ordinates or connects with
Welsh colleagues, or whether it is welcome.
Q26 Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con):
Welcome and congratulations. My questions will be a
bit about Wales, but also Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I do not want to put you in a constitutional hotspot,
because most Ministers and MPs could not answer
some of these questions, but hopefully they will help to
clarify the position and provide a bit of guidance to us.
You will be held accountable to Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland, because there are Scottish, Welsh
and Northern Ireland MPs who sit in this place and
will, of course, hold you to account. One part of the Bill
is the advisory board—clause 11, I think. As part of
that, part 4 and subsections (a)(b)(c) and (d) specify
certain participants who should be part of the advisory
board. It is very specific about ensuring the representation
of the interests of voluntary organisations that work
with victims of domestic abuse in England, healthcare
services in England and providers of social care in
England. Given that, certainly for now, you cover England
and Wales, do you think it would be helpful for us to
specify the same stakeholders from Wales to ensure that
they are on the advisory board and that England and
Wales are represented at that level?
Nicole Jacobs: Potentially. Because some of those
issues are devolved to Wales, I would not want to
impose the requirement that someone would have to
come and sit on an advisory committee of mine if they
thought, “In actuality, this is something that we govern
ourselves.”
My intention is that the advisory committee will not
just be set at 10. That is something that I was looking at
last week. It could be set there, but there could be any
number of advisers. In fact, I have been highly encouraged
to use advisers from areas that perhaps do not sit in that
official capacity. I think I would be seeking out advice.
There is incredible work being done in Scotland. There
is good legislation and really interesting work there. I
think that, in any respect, I would be very curious and
would want advice from outside Wales and England.
I suppose I would leave it to you to consider whether
it is necessary to have them as official advisors. If my
role and passion in life is seeking out the best practice
—I assure you that it is—I would not be restricted by
borders in that way. I would be very interested to
visit—I often do this—and hear about work in Scotland,
and I would like to know more about Northern Ireland.
I am learning every day about Wales, and have done for
the past few years, since that legislation was introduced.
Q27 Luke Graham: That leads me to my next question.
In your experience—obviously, you come from the United
States, which is federal system with several different
states and lots of different jurisdictions, but they come
together as one country—do you find that domestic
abuse or relationships stop at certain political jurisdictions?
Nicole Jacobs: No, not at all. You will have issues
related to people moving from one place to another. In
fact, that is a tactic that abusive people use to isolate
19 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
their partner or family from sources of support. There
is no doubt that there is a need to co-ordinate and
understand cross-border.
Q28 Luke Graham: You have talked a lot about the
mapping exercise that you want to undertake. Do you
foresee problems in having a national network, when it
is not actually national—it covers England and Wales
only, which is not our country but only two parts of it?
Do you foresee major problems with that, especially
when many victims, as in my constituency, will be
flipping between different parts of the UK or will have
family the length and breadth of the UK?
Nicole Jacobs: You are correct that that is true. My
understanding is that what is happening in Scotland is
quite impressive in terms of legislative changes. I know
from a frontline-service perspective that in England we
often look to Wales and Scotland to see what is happening
there. I would not anticipate there being something
superior happening in England. It would be more about
learning, co-ordinating and making sure that my office
would talk to equivalents in Scotland. My understanding
of Scotland is that there is more of a regional and
planned perspective of services. There is a lot of learning
there, and certainly co-ordination.
Looking down the line, if there was a view taken
between countries that there was inconsistency in service
provision and something to bring back to you, that
would certainly happen. I can imagine there would
be a lot of cross-border support. I am about ending
the postcode lottery: if there was a related issue in
Scotland, I cannot imagine we would not find ways to
work together and to promote those ideas. I hope that
addresses it.
Q29 Luke Graham: It does. I appreciate that. I have
one final question, if the Chair does not mind.
Unfortunately, in an area such as this, your role is so
worthy and so wanted throughout the United Kingdom.
I do not want to put you in a political hotspot with our
constitution, whether it is Brexit or other movements
where the UK can become a bit of an issue. However, I
have a big concern. In my constituency I have
Clackmannanshire, which has the highest instance per
head of domestic abuse in Scotland. It is as much of a
postcode lottery in Scotland as it is in other parts of the
United Kingdom.
To be devolved does not mean to be separate. You
come from a country with a federal system; the point
about eminent domain still rests within this UK Parliament,
as the sovereign Parliament. I do not see this as an
either/or model. I would be very keen for a role such as
yours to have a UK-wide remit, following a similar
model to the Office for Veterans’ Affairs that was recently
launched, which connects devolved and reserved matters
and guarantees guidelines and standards throughout
the United Kingdom, which I think is exceptionally
important.
Do you foresee any problems? The Bill is quite specific
about Wales. Paragraphs (c) to (g) of clause 6(2) talk
about
“undertaking or supporting (financially or otherwise) the carrying
out of research; providing information, education or training…to
increase public awareness…consulting public authorities…co-
operating with, or working…with, public authorities, voluntary
organisations and other persons”.
Domestic Abuse Bill 20
At the moment, the Bill talks about
“co-operating with, or working jointly with, public authorities,
voluntary organisations and other persons, whether in England
and Wales or outside the United Kingdom.”
I find it bizarre that we are creating a Bill that says, “We
want you to co-operate with England and Wales and
other countries outside the UK, but not the two other
constituent parts of the United Kingdom.” Do you
foresee any problems for us in trying to extend your role
in just paragraphs (c) to (g)—which currently apply to
Wales—to Scotland and Northern Ireland? Obviously
we might have to stagger that for Northern Ireland
because we have no Assembly just now, but do you
foresee any problems with extending your role for guidelines,
consultation and research, so you can complete the
mapping exercise and make sure that the service is
provided to all citizens of the United Kingdom, rather
than just two constituent parts of it? I will take away the
political side for a minute—that is our job—but from a
practical point of view, so long as you got a budget
uplift to match, do you foresee any problems in your
role being extended to Scotland and Northern Ireland?
The Chair: May I intervene for a moment? We have
less than 15 minutes left and we still have four colleagues
who have been waiting patiently to ask their questions. I
wonder whether we could just speed it up, please.
Nicole Jacobs: I will give you a quick answer. I am
not sure about some of that, but my instinct about the
things you listed is that certainly some would be easier
than others and, from my own knowledge of working,
some things—such as the good practice mapping and
some research—might be more welcome to colleagues
in Scotland. Whether that extends to the whole breadth
of the activities you described, I am not sure. My
understanding of Scotland is that there are different
structures, and different things are perhaps being mapped
and planned that I am not aware of.
Q30 Luke Graham: There is no commissioner in
Scotland. We have no equivalent. Currently, it falls
between the courts and Police Scotland to pick up some
of the activity. We have no commissioner, so this would
not be a substitute; it would be a complement. The idea
is that, just as in Wales, you would have a role in that
consultation on the work. Obviously, a legislative consent
motion could be passed in the Scottish Parliament so
that this was done in consultation and agreement with
different levels of government rather than being imposed
with an iron fist. I just wonder whether you foresee
problems on an operational level. I know about the
political bits; those are for us to deal with. I am just
interested in that operational point.
Nicole Jacobs: Without having thought about it very
much, I would say that some of those points seem
obvious, but I am afraid I would have to consider some
of the others further. There are things I know of happening
in Edinburgh in children’s social care—“Safe and
Together”—on which we are already co-ordinating with
England. There are really obvious things to me about
learning and maybe some shared research and other
matters. On whether it extends to the whole list, I would
have to come back to you or defer to your decisions.
Q31 Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab): Welcome to the
post. What should we say in the Bill about perpetrators?
There is a lot about prevention orders and so on, but
21 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
what should we say about that? Should we say anything
about rehabilitation or should we just lock them all up?
What should we do?
Nicole Jacobs: I would say a couple of things. There
are some criminal justice elements in the Bill. Making
those robust and effective is not necessarily to do with
locking people up but about ensuring that the criminal
justice system is working in the way that it should and
that is set out. I believe that one of the things we do not
do enough is to prioritise multi-agency working around
the courts system. In the area I have come from, we have
specialist courts. We have a court management group,
which is all the criminal justice partners and the specialist
service, and they can collectively remember and problem
solve around the mistakes that they inevitably may be
making. That is not intentional; sometimes it is to do
with the bulky way that our criminal justice system works.
In terms of holding perpetrators to account, I suppose
the one thing I would really encourage the Committee to
consider is in what ways, in piloting the DVPOs, we
could consider what helps to make the implementation
work. We should not just say, “Are the police doing it or
not?”, as if it is down to one entity; it has to be the whole
of the criminal justice system working.
Having said that—I talked about the duty—I believe
there is very little consistency in terms of enabling
people to engage and change their behaviour. I would
include that in the broadening of the statutory duty.
Again, you will hear later from Jo Todd, who is much
more of an expert than me, about the breadth of
service. There is a perpetrator strategy that many
organisations have signed up to that I am very interested
in, and which I am sure you will have sight of or will
perhaps be given in written evidence. I would stand
behind that type of strategy, which is about prevention,
provision of service and what I would call incentives to
change—both carrots and sticks. What do we do to
really have the breadth of provision that we need? Of all
the domestic abuse provision, that is probably the most
patchy in terms of where you could find places to
change.
Q32 Vernon Coaker: Did you say you had seen the
draft of the framework document—that you have been
talking to the Minister about a draft of the framework?
Nicole Jacobs: I have not been talking to the Minister
about it.
Q33 Vernon Coaker: Did you say you have seen a
draft?
Nicole Jacobs: I have seen a draft, yes.
Q34 Vernon Coaker: Do you think it would be helpful
for the Committee see that draft when we get to clause
10?
Nicole Jacobs: I do not know if I am getting into your
processes too much here. I think it is being prepared.
Victoria Atkins: It is in hand, Mr Coaker. That point
is very well understood.
Q35 Vernon Coaker: That is very helpful. So we are
going to see a draft before we get to clause 10 rather
than at the end. That is helpful; thank you very much.
Nicole Jacobs: I might have said “at the end” meaning
published to the public.
Domestic Abuse Bill 22
Q36 Vernon Coaker: That is fine. It is quite helpful.
Just to say to you, Nicole, it is very helpful for us to see
drafts before we discuss the clause, so we know what we
are talking about, rather than appearing at the end of
the Bill as a framework that we do not know anything
about.
Nicole Jacobs: I can imagine, yes.
Vernon Coaker: It is therefore very helpful that the
Minister has helped to support your remarks that we
are going to see that before clause 10.
Q37 Paul Scully: Welcome to the role, Nicole. You
mentioned your views on the gendered nature of domestic
abuse at the beginning. Some people have been suggesting
that we should have a violence against women and
girls commissioner, rather than a Domestic Abuse
Commissioner. What are your views on that?
Nicole Jacobs: I understand the logic. Obviously,
some of those who have said that are colleagues of
mine. One of the things we would all have to understand
about doing that is just how broad a remit you would be
moving to. That would certainly extend well beyond all
the discussion we have had this morning, to do it
properly and do it well.
While many strategies and, certainly, the Government
strategy is a violence against women and girls strategy—I
appreciate that—when I am describing to you the breadth
of what needs to happen for domestic abuse, it is a heck
of a lot of work. There is a lot of progress to make. In
doing that, it will strengthen certain aspects of what we
call those strands of violence against women and girls.
For example, so-called honour-based marriage, forced
marriage—all these things intersect. By strengthening
the approach in general, you are addressing aspects of
that, but you are certainly not covering the whole breadth
of it. That is when I was referring back to my looking
forward to working with the Victims’ Commissioner,
and certainly the national advisers in Wales and colleagues
in Scotland, where there is a lot of expertise on that. If
you wanted to broaden my remit to that, I feel I have the
background and understanding to do it, but I would
just caution that you are talking about a huge difference.
Again, going back to the very first thing I said to you,
the reason I was so motivated by this role is the breadth
of what still needs to happen. Sometimes, we think,
“Oh, we’ve been talking about domestic abuse for years
and years and somehow it’s all sorted.” Well, it is really
not. It has shaky foundations, and I think that is what
we can address here.
Q38 Paul Scully: That is great. That is why I wanted
to ask you about the awareness. One of your roles is to
raise public awareness as well, but you rightly said at the
beginning that you do not have the capacity to do all the
public health campaigns and these kinds of things. How
do you see your role and capacity to join the dots,
whether from entry-level, early intervention for emotional
abuse at that stage, through to members of the public
and others who come into professional or personal
contact with people in an emotional or domestic abuse
scenario?
Nicole Jacobs: I guess what I meant by that is that
there is not a budget to run a huge public campaign in
the same way as those run by the Home Office in the
23 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
past. That rightfully sits within the remit of what needs
to be funded and developed in Government, including
in the Department for Education and in public health.
My role would be to influence that type of campaign,
and I would be mindful that my role would be about
asserting what kind of services are needed to underpin
that campaign. We are raising expectations and awareness.
That is a good thing, but we must have the infrastructure
in place to meet the needs of what that would bring.
The Chair: This will probably have to be the last
question.
Q39 Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD): I will
be brief, Chair. One of the significant things in the
debate around the Domestic Abuse Bill has been the
Istanbul convention. How significant is it to the work
you do that we make sure that we ratify it and are in line
with it?
Nicole Jacobs: My understanding is that this Bill will
help us to meet those commitments. It is incredibly
important. The Istanbul convention is important
symbolically, in terms of the message that is sent. A lot
of what it does is to create an expectation of Government
commitment. Some of the elements of the Bill are
tidying up certain things, but there are also elements of
broadening the duty—which we will hear about from
other witnesses—and broadening the statutory provision
of services and strengthening the duty for that all the
more. I know I sound a bit like a broken record. Other
colleagues will present fine-tuning of anti-discrimination
clauses and that kind of thing, which I would obviously
support. Symbolically, the Istanbul convention is very
important, and what it would deliver practically is
important.
Christine Jardine: Thank you. Apologies again for
the combination of my sore throat and my accent.
Q40 The Chair: Nicole, before I end the session, is
there anything you wanted to share with the Committee,
in a couple of minutes?
Nicole Jacobs: I hope you have found my evidence
and advice helpful. I have been in post for a month, so I
am doing my best in terms of trying to give you the
information you need. As you go through the process, I
feel confident that you will be presented with a lot more
specific information by other colleagues.
I did want to talk about a couple of things that you
will be hearing, and I want you to know that I feel
strongly about them. I would like you to consider them.
We have talked about migrant women, and you have
heard and will hear a lot about that, obviously. I am
interested in whatever we can do that would improve
the family court response in statutory guidance or in the
Bill. There is a real, desperate need to better understand
what exactly we have to do in relation to the family
court. You might be tabling amendments relating to
women charged with crimes, understanding their past
in domestic abuse, and understanding how that may
have influenced their offending. I am encouraged to
know that that may be coming.
Lastly, there is the issue of the kind of abuse and
financial abuse that happens post-separation. Our coercive
control law requires people to be living together, when
in fact some of the financial abuse will come after
Domestic Abuse Bill 24
separation. You will be hearing evidence about that.
Again, I would like you to know that I am encouraging
of those types of provisions and improvements. Thank
you for being patient with me and for understanding my
new role. Thank you for your support. I was struck on
Second Reading by the level of support from all parties
and by the wish to strengthen my role and powers.
Thank you very much for all your support today.
The Chair: Nicole, on behalf of the Committee, I
thank you for the time you have spent with us today. We
wish you well in the challenge that lies ahead.
Examination of Witness
Louisa Rolfe gave evidence.
Q41 The Chair: We have until 11.25 for this session.
Will our witness kindly introduce herself and say something
about her role?
Louisa Rolfe: Good morning. My name is Louisa
Rolfe and I am Deputy Chief Constable of West Midlands
police, but I have been the National Police Chiefs’
Council lead on domestic abuse since 2013. The job
involves working closely with the sector, the Home
Office, the Crown Prosecution Service, HMICFRS and
the College of Policing. For four years I have reported
quarterly to the Home Secretary at the national oversight
group, and my focus is on improving the police response
to domestic abuse.
Q42 Victoria Atkins: For colleagues who are not
familiar with the acronyms of the Home Office and
policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council is the
collective of the most senior police officers in the country.
It is fair to say that it is an influential and important
body in the law enforcement world. Deputy Chief
Constable, how do you rate the police response to
domestic abuse?
Louisa Rolfe: I think it is improving. It has significantly
improved over a number of years, but I think it is
stretched, and it is highly dependent on partnership
working with other agencies, particularly the provision
of IDVA services and refuge services. As you will be
aware, we have worked hard to improve identification,
and since 2013, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary
and fire and rescue services has noted substantial and
significant improvements in the police response. It
recognises, however, that the service is stretched in its
response to domestic abuse.
Reporting has gone up by more than 90% since 2013,
and some of that is down to improved accuracy in
recording and reporting domestic abuse. Up to 40% of
that 90% increase could be because we have got much
better at identifying things that might have been recorded
in the past as a non-crime incident that involved a
verbal argument. There is now better identification of
things such as common assault and harassment within
those incidents. The proportion of reported incidents
that become crimes has increased and, despite forces
reducing in size since 2010, all have either maintained or
invested in their response to domestic abuse, with dedicated
investigators and specialists working in the field.
We have worked with the College of Policing to
develop the domestic abuse risk assessment, which is an
improvement on the established DASH risk assessment
25 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
process. Evidence-based research helped us to develop
that, and with a number of charities we have also
developed the Domestic Abuse Matters training programme,
which has been academically proven to increase the
empathy of officers with victims and their understanding
of abuse. Things are improving.
We are at a challenging time for prosecutions, and a
number of things are driving that. Between 2013 and
2016, prosecutions for domestic abuse increased rapidly.
They plateaued in 2016 and have fallen since. A number
of things are driving that—this is about demand and
pressures on the police service and the Crown Prosecution
Service. When you look end to end at cases, however, it
is also about the higher thresholds required for charging,
the standards expected of digital evidence, medical
evidence, and disclosure. Attrition in cases, post-charge,
has reduced dramatically, but the number of cases
hitting the threshold for charge has also reduced. I
think that has gone too far, and we are working hard
with forces nationally to improve the number of cases
that achieve a prosecution and get justice for victims.
Q43 Victoria Atkins: In terms of the national oversight
committee, which you have already mentioned, that is a
meeting at national level, chaired by the Home Secretary,
with organisations ranging from you, for instance,
representing the police, through to HMICFRS and the
CPS but also charities and stakeholders, who are important
members of the group as well. Through that committee,
what challenge do our members give to you, representing
the police, in terms of the police response to domestic
abuse incidents?
Louisa Rolfe: There is a quite robust challenge. Certainly,
at the last couple of meetings, we have talked quite
extensively about the police response to migrant women
and ensuring that our work with immigration enforcement
services is effective in identifying and recognising the
particular challenges and concerns faced by women
who may have no recourse to public funds or have
uncertain immigration status. There has been an appropriate
challenge from the sector in ensuring that there is an
informed and thoughtful response, not a clumsy response,
in addressing those issues. There has been a robust
challenge about the decrease in prosecutions and particularly
referrals to charge. I have worked jointly with the Crown
Prosecution Service to present to that meeting a detailed
overview of the challenges as we understand them and
the work we are doing to improve the situation.
Q44 Victoria Atkins: Just to give us an idea of the
pressures that domestic abuse in all its forms places on
the police, do you have any measure of how many
phone calls or reports to the police there are each day or
each year, for example?
Louisa Rolfe: The Office for National Statistics collects
police data and the dataset in terms of calls to police,
reported incidents and crimes, is publicly available each
year. We are talking about more than 2 million reports
to policing every year. It is important to understand
how it is a growing proportion of demand to the police
service as well. More than 11% of emergency call demand
to the police service is now domestic abuse and more
than 30% of violence with injury incidents recorded
by the police are domestic abuse. So, it is not only
increasing, it is a growing proportion of caseload. It is
often multiple issues together: a significant proportion
Domestic Abuse Bill 26
of rape investigations are domestic abuse rape. Honour-
based abuse, or FGM, are often issues of domestic
abuse as well. It is not a simplistic issue, but very
complex.
Q45 Victoria Atkins: Will the introduction of
20,000 police officers over the next three years assist in
your investigation of domestic abuse?
Louisa Rolfe: Undoubtedly, yes.
Q46 Carolyn Harris: It is a pleasure to meet you. I
have been very happily married for 25 years, but I was
married before and it was not so happy. I was a victim
of domestic abuse—I have never said this before. I can
remember the police coming to my house and saying,
“It’s just a domestic”. The only person who was going
to be able to do anything about that was me, the
following day, but I did not do anything about it,
because I was afraid. Needless to say, that marriage did
not last very long. But I really worry about people of
my generation and older, who believe that this is normal
and quite acceptable. In the Welsh valleys, I have heard
so many times the expression, “Just give it a clip across
the ear-hole”. We are getting better but are not where
we should be. That is down to the fact that the generations
coming behind us are much stronger women, in the
sense that they will not take the nonsense that we took.
How many older people are we seeing who we know are
victims of domestic abuse but are afraid to report it or
to take that step to actually admit it?
Louisa Rolfe: From my work with charities I know
that that is a very real issue. It goes back to the discussion
earlier about the gendered nature of domestic abuse.
Some of it is inextricably linked with people’s perceptions
of a woman’s place. Particularly with older generations—I
know from charities that people are less inclined to
report and can often feel more isolated, and that statutory
agencies will be less likely to listen, support and understand
if someone has been married for a long time in an
established relationship.
We have found that domestic abuse is not restricted
to one societal group or one area of the UK—it happens
everywhere—but perpetrators, particularly manipulative
perpetrators, will focus on the vulnerabilities of their
victim. If that victim feels that they do not have a close
network of friends or family and that agencies are not
likely to believe them—perpetrators will often tell a
victim, “Nobody will believe you”—that can be exacerbated
by their vulnerability.
It might be that their vulnerability is that they are
older and more isolated; it might be that they are
somebody with uncertain immigration status and their
spouse holds all their papers. There are many ways that
perpetrators will manipulate and seek to control victims.
This is why I promote the work that we have done on
the Domestic Abuse Matters training, because it is about
understanding what is behind the abuse and looking for
signs of control. A lot of research now shows that
violence is not necessarily an indicator of more violence,
but that coercion and control tends to be the highest
risk indicator that we have in domestic abuse.
Q47 Carolyn Harris: Police are under a huge amount
of pressure, with lack of resources, lack of police officers
and everything else that we talk about on a regular
27 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
[Carolyn Harris]
basis. With the DAPOs, I know that the victim will not
be charged, but the police service will be charged for
court cases. Will that prevent police forces that are
already under pressure in terms of budget resources
from going for DAPOs because of the financial
implications?
Louisa Rolfe: I have spoken to forces about this, and I
think it will not. The cost of the DAPO would be the
least of our concerns. There are many positive aspects
to the DAPO: that it protects from all abuse and not
just violence, that it is more flexible, that anyone can
apply, that there is no restrictive duration and that it
can include positive and negative restrictions. Policing
is not deterred by cost, and I have some examples of
that. We have a strong record of sometimes stepping in
where other agencies are not able to.
A good example is that in my own force last year we
spent more than £40,000 over a couple of months on
emergency accommodation for women with no recourse
to public funds. Where even local authorities and refuges
are not able to find emergency accommodation, the
police service will fund that, because our priority is the
safety and protection of victims.
With the DAPO, there are some costs, and it is not
just how much it costs—at the moment, it is £500 to
present a domestic violence protection order at court—but
often the on-costs and logistics that we must consider as
well. When the domestic violence protection orders
came in, they were something that the police service
must present at court. Some forces employed lawyers to
do it and others trained staff to do it, so there is an
investment in an additional team and extra resources.
Every force has done that, but we have done it to
variable degrees.
I think the DAPO will focus on assessing the resources
required to do this effectively, but we also need an
understanding of the scale and volume. Are we anticipating
domestic abuse protection orders for all 2 million victims,
or are we thinking of the thresholds at which they
would apply and how they could be used most effectively?
Q48 Carolyn Harris: Where are you on a register for
perpetrators?
Louisa Rolfe: I am concerned that a distinct register,
not embedded within established police systems such as
the police national computer, the police national database
or the ViSOR—Violent and Sex Offender Register—system,
adds unnecessary complexity cost and, most importantly,
risk. The Bichard inquiry following the tragic deaths in
Soham recommended that information about dangerous
perpetrators should not be dispersed over different systems.
That is why the PND system was introduced. There are
established ways of registering dangerous individuals
on the police national database. The disclosure and
barring scheme system has access to that database, as
do other agencies such as probation.
There is definitely work for us to do in the police
service. I have been working with the College of Policing
on what the principles for managing serial perpetrators
should look like. It recently reported and provided a
draft report in which it made some recommendations
on improved use of tools to identify dangerous serial
perpetrators, effective use of the systems that we have,
such as the PNC, PND and ViSOR, and effective multi-
agency management of those individuals at the most
Domestic Abuse Bill 28
dangerous end, using multi-agency public protection
arrangements effectively in the way that we do now for
dangerous sex offenders or dangerous violent offenders,
because those methods are established and it would
worry me if we tried to create something distinct over
here.
The draft report also recommended a more proactive
use of the domestic violence disclosure schemes. If we
have identified a dangerous serial perpetrator and we
are really clear about the thresholds, when the police
service or any other agency involved in the management
of that individual becomes aware of a new relationship,
there should be more proactive disclosure and use of
right to know for potential victims.
My concern about the domestic abuse register is in
the logistics and practicalities. Where do we draw the
line? Do we intend to add 2 million individuals to that
register each year? What are the risks and implications
if your perpetrator is not on the register because you
have not reported to the police? Would that offer a
false sense of security to victims? I would be the first to
say that there is more to do to use the systems we
have effectively, but I would worry about creating a list
that might present as a quick fix but does not address
the risk.
Q49 Wendy Morton: I am really interested in hearing
that you are sharing some of the work you are doing in
the west midlands. You mentioned Domestic Abuse
Matters training. In addition to that, could the police
introduce any other measures to encourage victims to
come forward to the police in the first instance?
Louisa Rolfe: We have done a lot to improve people’s
confidence. If a victim is to have confidence, I have got
to ensure that all the charities I work with have confidence,
so that every IDVA we have a relationship with, as well
as every GP or health visitor who might come across a
victim, will reassure them and give them confidence in
reporting to the police.
There is a lot of really good work going on nationally.
For example, the IRIS—identification and referral to
improve safety—project is live in Birmingham and a lot
of other places across the UK. GPs and health practitioners
are trained to recognise the signs of domestic abuse and
to be able to tell a victim in a very informed way what
happens when you report to the police. Often, people
have a lot of fear about the consequences of reporting
to the police, and it is really important that there is
immediately accessible advice and support for victims
as well.
Vernon Coaker: One of the real issues that has dogged
us for years is the postcode lottery in dealing with
domestic abuse and the different responses from agencies
and police forces in different parts of the country. Some
do it better than others, and prosecution rates vary,
with some taking into account emotional abuse as well
as physical abuse. Your role is to try to pull all that
together and generate a national standard that everyone
adheres to. Is it fair to say that there is still a lot of
difference between forces? What are we doing to try to
ensure that everyone is raising their standard to that
level?
The National Police Chiefs’ Council will say, “As
senior officers, we will adhere to these standards. It is
absolutely right and we agree with all of it,” but we all
29 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
know that sometimes it does not always work in practice.
How big a challenge is that for each force? What will
you do on that and what more could we do to help?
Louisa Rolfe: There are a number of issues here.
When I meet with the sector and the charities, I also
meet with a representative from every policing region in
the UK. Additionally, the Police Service of Northern
Ireland, Police Scotland and the Welsh forces are represented
in that meeting. We share best practice.
There is a lot to be said for working closely with the
College of Policing in ensuring that, when we are developing
policy and practice, it is evidence-based. We took a long
time developing the Domestic Abuse Matters training
with charities and what I like about it is that it is very
focused on challenging culture and perceptions. We
have run a number of independent academic evaluations
that prove that it increases officers’ empathy and
understanding. That is the one training that I recommend
nationally, and forces are rolling that out.
It is quite challenging: in my own force, the training
has taken us nearly a year, because it requires an abstraction
of nearly 25% of your workforce to be trained face to
face. You need to commit to developing trainers within
your workforce who can continue to develop practice
and understanding. It is quite a big ask, but we are
rolling it out slowly across forces nationally.
On the work on the domestic abuse risk assessment,
the DASH tool is very good and still very effectively
used by IDVA services, charities and specialists. For
many years, lots of forces and academics told me that it
was not working for first responders. We have worked
with Cardiff University women’s safety unit to develop
something that we know through evaluation better identifies
coercion and control with first responders. We have
worked with the College of Policing to develop authorised
professional practice, so that there is one standard, and
I work with regional leads and force leads. I publish a
newsletter regularly to forces and practitioners across
the UK on improvements and the work we are doing.
A lot is going on to improve practice, but some is
dependent on local variation and local arrangements.
There is a balance—I do not want to stifle innovation.
Some of the best work has been developed in forces and
then shared. Northumbria has done a lot of work on
developing a multi-agency tasking and co-ordination
response to perpetrators. That has now influenced the
work the College of Policing has done and will be part
of the guidance on how to better manage serial perpetrators.
One of our challenges is the willingness of partner
agencies locally to work with policing to develop an
approach to multi-agency safeguarding and management
of perpetrators.
Q50 Vernon Coaker: Is there anything more that we
could do? We have the inspectorate later and could try
to influence what they inspect, I guess. What you said is
absolutely right and exactly what one would expect you
to do, but we still know that there will be individual
forces where this will not happen in the way that you or
any of us would want. How do you drive that change?
Louisa Rolfe: HMICFRS has included domestic abuse
in its PEEL inspections—police effectiveness, efficiency
and legitimacy—and it has been a significant part of
that. You will hear from Zoe Billingham, the lead HMI,
later. We talk quite regularly. If she finds significant
Domestic Abuse Bill 30
variation in forces, she will often flag it with me so that I
can work with local leaders to address that. The biggest
challenge is how we embed a more public health approach.
I hear from charities that their concerns are less about
policing and more about how we ensure that all agencies
can work together and prioritise this effectively.
Q51 Sarah Newton: I would like to start by saying to
my colleague, the hon. Member for Swansea East how
brave she was to share her experience. It reminds us all
that every part of the country and every sort of woman
is very much affected and how important this work is,
so I am grateful to Carolyn. Talking about the Welsh
valleys and traditional cultures resonates with me as I
represent Cornwall. The point about older women being
reluctant to come forward is very much borne out in the
evidence.
I thank the deputy chief constable for being with and
answering the questions so well. In the new definition in
the Bill, we will extend domestic abuse to other family
members—grown-up adults and older people—and the
abuse that they commit, which is really important. You
have described a long process of domestic abuse training—
IRIS training, partnership working—to get the frontline
police officers sufficiently trained to be able to recognise
domestic abuse. This is another huge challenge you are
now going to face in extending that definition and the
training, so that people are looking out for a different
group of victims and perpetrators. How will you go
about doing that?
Louisa Rolfe: Thankfully, much of the training we
have invested in and the work on domestic abuse risk
assessment will apply, because it identifies coercive
controlling behaviour, which is often prevalent in those
relationships where there are adult children and an
elderly parent. I do not worry that we will struggle.
The police service has been working for many years
to better understand and address vulnerability, and that
is why we had such a dramatic increase in the reporting
and recording of domestic abuse. In reality, many of
those incidents are already recognised and reported.
The challenge is often in the provision of adequate
support services, to ensure that victims feel confident
that they can take that leap and pursue a prosecution.
There are some great domestic abuse perpetrator
programmes out there, such as the Drive Project, which
focuses on addressing behavioural change. The evaluation
of that programme has shown that it reduces abuse by
30%, which is hugely impressive. However, the reality is
that the College of Policing recently looked at the
provision of perpetrator programmes and found that
only 1% of perpetrators participate in them. I do not
think that that is because of the reluctance of perpetrators;
it is about the lack of availability.
We found in the significant increase in the reporting
of domestic abuse that many incidents might not meet
the threshold for prosecution. In the absence of perpetrator
programmes to address the behaviour, we are in a
difficult position. We must do something, so we focus
on safeguarding victims, but we really want to work
with other agencies to ensure that there is also a solution
to address that behaviour.
Q52 Diana Johnson: I just wanted to ask you a very
straightforward question about the definition of domestic
abuse and clause 1(2)(a), which gives an age for when
domestic abuse will be investigated. What is your view,
31 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
[Diana Johnson]
as a police officer, of having the cut-off at 16? The Joint
Committee heard evidence about abusive relationships
that were happening below 16, and young people were
querying why 16 would be the time that it would be
treated as domestic abuse. As I understand it, below
that it is treated as child abuse. From a police perspective,
what is your take on that?
Louisa Rolfe: In reality, often our specialist officers
who investigate child abuse or domestic abuse work
within public protection investigation teams in forces.
For many years, our approach to child abuse investigation
has been more advanced than towards domestic abuse,
so there has been some catching up to do. While it is
something that causes a little bit of consternation, the
reality is that, in terms of the service provided to
victims under 16, we would identify an abusive relationship.
There is probably something about the justice system
approach as well. If you have an older perpetrator, you
might get an improved justice sanction if you address it
as child abuse, as opposed to domestic abuse. The
reality is that we would not be blinkered and say, “It is
this, not that.” We would look to understand the dynamics
of the relationship.
Some of that might be down to the vagaries of our
justice system. The coercion and control legislation was
so groundbreaking for us because it was the first time
Domestic Abuse Bill 32
we had an opportunity to move away from focusing on
single incidents of abuse, which often meant that much
of the dynamic of what was going on was lost in the
presentation of evidence and so we lost the opportunity
to present to the court the totality of abuse and the
impact on the victim and their life. At the moment, the
reality is that we would provide an equitable—if not an
improved—response to someone under the age of 16.
The definition, in that regard, does not affect the support
that victims might receive from the police service.
The Chair: If there are no further questions from
Members, I thank our witness very much indeed for the
time you have spent with us. We are very grateful for the
evidence you have given us.
Colleagues, that brings us to the end of our morning
sitting. The Committee will meet again at 2.30 pm in
this room. The proceedings will be chaired by the right
hon. Member for Delyn. It is quite safe to leave your
possessions here—the room will be locked. In the event
that there will be a general election, quite where we are
going with the Bill I do not know.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.
—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
11.24 am
Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o’clock.
 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
HOUSE OF COMMONS
OFFICIAL REPORT
GENERAL COMMITTEES

Public Bill Committee

DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL

Second Sitting
Tuesday 29 October 2019

(Afternoon)

CONTENTS
Examination of witnesses.
Adjourned till Thursday 31 October at half-past Eleven o’clock.
Written evidence reported to the House.

PBC (Bill 002) 2019 - 2020

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final version of the report should be clearly marked in a copy of
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Saturday 2 November 2019

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33 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019 Domestic Abuse Bill 34

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: SIR DAVID AMESS, † DAVID HANSON

† Atkins, Victoria (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for the Home Department)
† Coaker, Vernon (Gedling) (Lab)
† Dakin, Nic (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
† Graham, Luke (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
† Harris, Carolyn (Swansea East) (Lab)
† Hughes, Eddie (Walsall North) (Con)
Jardine, Christine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Johnson, Diana (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
† Jones, Mr Marcus (Nuneaton) (Con)
† Keegan, Gillian (Chichester) (Con)
† Merriman, Huw (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
† Morton, Wendy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for Justice)
† Newton, Sarah (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
† Norris, Alex (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Saville Roberts, Liz (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
† Scully, Paul (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
† Smith, Eleanor (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Rob Page, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Zoe Billingham, HM Inspector of Constabulary and HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services

Nazir Afzal OBE, National Adviser on Domestic Abuse to the Welsh Government

Eleanor Briggs, Head of Policy and Research, Action for Children

Sally Noden, Children’s Services Manager, Newcastle Family Support Service (Breaking the Cycle programme),
Action for Children

Emily McCarron, Policy Manager, Age UK

Jo Todd, CEO, Respect UK

35 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
Public Bill Committee
Tuesday 29 October 2019
(Afternoon)
[MR DAVID HANSON in the Chair]
Domestic Abuse Bill
Examination of Witness
Zoe Billingham gave evidence.
2.30 pm
The Chair: We are quorate, so we will commence. If
anybody wishes to take off their jackets, they can. I
welcome our first witness. Please introduce yourself.
Zoe Billingham: Hello. I am Zoe Billingham, Her
Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, and I am also
responsible for the work that Her Majesty’s inspectorate
of constabulary and fire and rescue services does on
domestic abuse.
The Chair: I am grateful for your attendance today. I
call the Minister to commence questioning.
Q53 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State
for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins): Hello,
Ms Billingham. You have inspected the police response
to domestic abuse for a number of years. What changes
have you seen in that time?
Zoe Billingham: Considerable changes. We started
this journey back in 2014 with our first report. We
called it “Everyone’s business”—slightly ironically, because
what we found in 2014 when we looked at the police
response to domestic abuse was that, in forces, it most
certainly was not everyone’s business. A second-rate
service was being provided to victims of domestic abuse
when you compared it with that provided to victims of
other crime. There was a poor understanding of domestic
abuse among frontline officers and insufficient leadership
to make lots of promises an operational reality. It was a
pretty dire situation that we found in 2014.
We made a series of recommendations. We were
hugely grateful for the support of the national oversight
group, chaired by the then Home Secretary and Ministers,
in holding the police’s feet to the fire. We are also very
complimentary of the work police forces have done in
the intervening five years to make this a real priority—to
focus on domestic abuse in the way it ought to be
focused on and to ensure that officers are trained and
equipped to deal with domestic abuse, that victims are
listened to, understood and taken seriously, and that
investment has been made in areas of specialisms and
protected, despite reductions in police budgets across
the board.
We highly regard and highly commend forces for the
changes that we have seen in terms of both the attitudes
of frontline officers and the leadership displayed across
forces. However, there is always a “but” with inspection
findings: the “but” is that there are still a number of
areas that forces need to improve on.
Domestic Abuse Bill 36
The Chair: The acoustics in this room are not great.
Some Members have indicated that they have difficulty
hearing. If witnesses, both present and future, can
boom, that would be very helpful.
Q54 Victoria Atkins: I forgot to say that it is a
pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson;
I apologise for that oversight.
Ms Billingham, you just mentioned that there are
some areas that still require attention. Are you able to
summarise those for us?
Zoe Billingham: I can give you a quick rundown of
the areas that we identified in our last published report,
which was in February 2019.
A better understanding around coercive and controlling
behaviour: while frontline officers better understand
domestic abuse and what their role is in keeping victims
safe and bringing perpetrators to justice, the nuances
around coercive control still need to be improved. We
recognise that many forces have invested very heavily in
training—in particular, face-to-face training, which has
been successful. However, there is still further to go.
Issues around identifying risk: how much risk is a
victim of domestic abuse at? There is still a lot of
variance in how officers identify and classify that risk
and inconsistencies in how that is being supervised. In
our last report, we expressed real reservations and concerns
around the drop-off in pre-charge bail and the protections
that that may afford. We are also concerned about the
number of occasions on which cases are discontinued
on the basis that the victim does not support police
action. We would also like to see forces take more
action to receive feedback directly from victims of domestic
abuse themselves, so they can tailor their services more
appropriately to put the victim at the heart of the
services provided.
The Chair: The shadow Minister has only just arrived
from the Division, so I call Gillian Keegan.
Q55 Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con): For those of
us who are less familiar with your world, how do you
use the domestic violence protection order today, and
how will this new provision make a difference on the
ground?
Zoe Billingham: In our inspections, our basic,
fundamental question is how well the police are keeping
victims of domestic abuse safe: how well they are using
the powers they have been given to make sure that
victims are safeguarded and perpetrators are brought to
justice. The proposals in the Bill regarding the new
order are really positive.
The use of DVPNs and DVPOs has been very patchy,
and some of the lessons that forces should have drawn
from their use need to be applied to the new orders if
they are to be successful. We will test this through our
inspections when these new orders come on board,
because we test how well forces are using DVPOs and
DVPNs now and we find that it is very patchy; it varies
from force to force.
A number of things will need to happen if the new
order is to be successful. First, officers need to be
properly trained. They need to understand the value of
these orders, because a degree of effort will be involved
37 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
in obtaining them. There needs to be clarity within
forces as to who is responsible. The forces that are best
at the orders now are those that have specialist teams
dedicated to undertaking that work; Essex police are a
really good example.
Forces will also need to have the time and necessary
resources to make sure they not only apply for the
orders but enforce against breach of orders, otherwise
there will be a danger of undermining victims’ confidence.
If there is something there to protect victims, but the
forces are not geared up to use that tool appropriately,
that is a potential risk. Of course, the pilots of the new
orders are to be commended and we would like to see
forces stepping forward and volunteering if they have
not already, so that the implementation of these orders
gets off on the right footing.
Q56 Gillian Keegan: Clearly, if implementation has
been patchy previously, it is going to be absolutely key.
Do you think this point about training and the patchy
response is at all linked to the fall in the number of
prosecutions and the number of people coming forward?
Zoe Billingham: When we inspect across domestic
abuse, we try to take a whole-system approach, in so far
as it relates to policing. We look at a whole range of
measures all the way across; where we see drops in areas
of performance, we are concerned.
Starting with the moment a call comes into a control
room, if we see that forces are not attending to domestic
abuse incidents as quickly as they should, that is warning
flag No. 1. Warning flag No. 2 is when the responding
officers who attend those incidents tend to arrest less.
All forces have a policy of positive action, but the
number of times that an alleged perpetrator of domestic
abuse is arrested varies between 80% in some forces and
30% in others, and that variation worries us. Warning
flag no. 3 is when too many cases are being discontinued
post-arrest on the basis that the victim does not support
police action. Nearly 50% of domestic abuse cases are
discontinued on that basis, and that worries us. We see
variance among forces in all parts of that whole-system
approach, and the orders are one part of that system in
which we see that variance.
As an inspectorate, we would like to see less variance
and greater consistency, because a victim of domestic
abuse in Cumbria is self-evidently entitled to the same
level of police service as a victim in Camden. We set
that as our expectation—rightly so, I think.
Q57 Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab): Thank you,
Zoe, for coming along. Are there serial offenders among
police forces in terms of variance? Are there forces that
you go to that are not as good as they should be, and
then you go back and they are still not as good as they
should be? I think I know the answer. If that is the case,
what can you do about it and why cannot we do
anything about it? You identify the problem, but then it
just carries on.
Zoe Billingham: It is really interesting; policing has a
habit of working like the swing of a pendulum. A force
may be at variance in, for example, its rate of arrest, and
we will put in our report—our local report—a
recommendation that that should be reviewed and looked
at. When we come back, we are listened to and we will
follow that through, and we find that that may have
changed. However, the danger is that, in addressing and
Domestic Abuse Bill 38
focusing responses on one particular area that we have
identified in our report, the eye is taken off the ball
elsewhere. Although the force may correct one part of
the whole-system approach, there may be something
that then surprises us and surprises them.
For example, the force may be arresting more but
may actually then be disposing of more cases, on the
basis that the victim does not support police action.
Now, that may be an appropriate thing to do, but we are
concerned that too often that resolution is being used
because hard-pressed officers simply have not got the
time to take the correct action to pursue the criminal
justice route and outcome.
Q58 Vernon Coaker: But what if the public wanted to
know that? If you want to know how good a school’s
exam results are, it is quite easy to find out—it is quite
easy to compare schools. That is not so true of police
forces, is it? I mean, what you say is quite right, but we
know that there are police forces that do not improve
their way of tackling domestic abuse by their serious
violence strategy going west—they do both, even with
the same resources and difficulties, even rural forces
compared with rural forces or city forces compared
with city ones. Everything is the same, yet there is a
difference in performance.
Would it not help if there was greater public awareness
of that? How can the inspectorate publish that information
so that people can look at it and say, “My police force is
not as good as equivalent forces”? League tables?
Zoe Billingham: Well, I am not sure—
Q59 Vernon Coaker: No—I just threw that out there.
I am just trying. I do not agree with that either, but I am
frustrated by the lack of that sort of thing.
Zoe Billingham: What we have promised to do since
2014 is to inspect police forces on domestic abuse every
year—year on year—until the service is what we would
want it to be. We have lived up to that promise and we
are still inspecting forces year on year, which is an
indicator that we are still not satisfied with the performance
that we find. We have to bear in mind that in the
intervening period—between our starting in 2014 and
now—there has been a whopping great increase in the
amount of demand being placed on officers. There has
been an 88% increase in recorded domestic abuse-related
crime.
Q60 Vernon Coaker: An 88% rise? When is the base
year for that?
Zoe Billingham: In the three years from 2015 on,
there has been an 88% increase. It represents 10% of all
crime and 40% of all crime with violence.
Q61 Vernon Coaker: Sorry to interrupt; I am just
trying to think. Was that 10% of crime that people have
gone to?
Zoe Billingham: Some 10% of all recorded crime that
police deal with, and 40% of all violence, has a domestic
abuse-related basis.
We do what we call our police effectiveness, efficiency
and legitimacy, or PEEL, inspections; I am sorry to go
into so much detail. We review police every year, and within
our vulnerability section we always look at domestic abuse.
39 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
Within that, we always provide the public with a judgment
on their police performance, of either “outstanding”,
“good”, “requires improvement”or “inadequate”. We think
that brings a degree of transparency, and we supplement
that with an annual report. We have published four—in
2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019—to shine the light on this
area.
However, I think that the sentiment behind your
question is this: “Should the public be made increasingly
aware of this issue?” Our answer would be a resounding
yes. We are playing a small part in that as the inspectorate,
but there might well be more that we can do—in fact, I
am sure of that.
Vernon Coaker: That is very helpful.
Q62 Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con):
Clearly, from the numbers that you are giving us, there
has been a huge increase in the trust in police for the
victims to come forward and report. The work that you
have been doing with police forces is clearly moving in
the right direction, so thank you.
The Bill seeks to simplify procedures for police officers,
which hopefully will result in higher levels of prosecution.
It also gives new powers or responsibilities to police
officers, particularly for two groups of people: children
and family members. We increasingly understand that
when children in households are under exposure to
domestic abuse and violence, it will make them more
likely to be either a perpetrator or a victim. From your
inspections of the constabulary, what steps are you
seeing them take to identify those children and refer
them?
The other type of domestic abuse now caught in the
Bill, which I think is brilliant, is adult family members
abusing elderly members or people with disabilities in
their families. Again, that is a new area for the police to
be tackling. Bearing in mind what you said about
resource constraints, what evidence have you seen of the
police tackling those particular issues?
Zoe Billingham: I can help particularly on the children
front because we do a lot of inspection, including with
other inspectorates, on the police response and other
agencies’ response to children. Since 2014, we have seen
a far greater awareness, particularly among those initially
attending officers on the scene, of the importance of
considering the impact of the domestic incident on the
child.
When we first started inspecting, I was new to the
area, but I was pretty horrified that police officers
would often go into households with children who were
themselves victims of the particular incident, even though
they may have been in another room. The police officers
were not even speaking to the children and checking
that they were okay. We have seen a big shift now in the
police’s understanding of the importance of safeguarding
children and referring them into local authorities as
appropriate, so that the appropriate safeguarding
conferences can then take place.
We have seen an increase in the workload, which is
why forces have invested in protecting vulnerable people
areas and departments, which includes children. We
continue to encourage that as an inspectorate so that
children are put at the heart of this. We also see the
prevalence of schemes such as Operation Encompass—an
incredibly simple scheme where, if police attend a domestic
Domestic Abuse Bill 40
abuse incident overnight, an arrangement with all the
local schools means that a single person in the relevant
school is notified that the child has had the most
traumatic experience. The teacher can take steps—perhaps
seemingly very small ones—to care for that child during
the course of the following day, and subsequently. Some
of these things are very easily done. They take a bit of
arrangement to put in place, but they are not that costly.
They do require a will and leadership.
I am not as able to help on elder abuse specifically,
but would be happy to write to you if there are any
specifics that I can think of that would help on that.
Sarah Newton: The fact that you need to do that
shows that that is an area of work, once the Bill goes
through: police forces have to consider that as domestic
abuse and violence. That is a whole new area for the
police to be trained on and for you to inspect, ensuring
that the new requirements are understood and the services
are there to support victims. Clearly, there is some work
to do there.
Q63 Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): I wanted
to talk about Operation Encompass; you raised it before
I had an opportunity to ask. It is a wonderful scheme. I
would like to see it rolled out across the UK as, I hope, a
compulsory thing, so that all schools know what goes on.
You will be aware, as I am, that women’s prisons are
full of women who have experienced domestic violence.
When these women are convicted of criminal offences,
it is very often through coercive control and behaviour.
Are police forces aware of that and are resources stopping
them from identifying that these women are victims of
trauma?
Zoe Billingham: To reinforce what you say about
women in prisons, perhaps the most profound thing I
have experienced in the five or six years I have been
doing this work is visiting a women’s prison and speaking
to prisoners, all of whom have been victims of domestic
abuse. They all gave an account in a very small focus
group of the failure of the police to understand the
circumstances that had, they said, driven them to activity
that resulted in their being in prison. I would certainly
like to look at that in greater detail in the future. It is
certainly something that I know more forces are thinking
about: how they can ensure, through training, that the
home circumstances of alleged offenders are being taken
into account when looking at women’s offending
particularly. I am afraid it is not something that we have
done a specific inspection on, but it is an area that we
are interested in looking at in the future.
Q64 Carolyn Harris: Me too. When you make
recommendations, do they have to be taken up by the
constabulary, or can they be ignored? What impact do
your recommendations have?
Zoe Billingham: We have no powers of direction. We
are an independent inspectorate, so our recommendations
are just that. A force could, if it so chose, ignore our
recommendations. We find that that happens almost
never; when it does, it will be because forces have had to
prioritise in different areas. Our power is to come back
time and again, to check whether the changes that we
recommended have indeed been made, and to report
to the public—in a clear way, I hope—whether the
41 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
improvements we thought necessary have been made
and, where they have not, to explain that that has not
happened. That will obviously affect the grade that we
provide to the force in that particular inspection.
Q65 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Justice (Wendy Morton): Hello, Ms Billingham. You
very kindly shared with us some statistics in answer to
another question; I noted that 10% of all recorded
crimes have a domestic abuse basis. I have heard concerns
about the recent fall in the number of prosecutions for
domestic abuse-related offences. Bearing in mind your
figures and our concerns, what do you feel could be
done to reverse that decline?
Zoe Billingham: I wish there was a simple answer; if
there was, it would have happened and the changes
would have been made. There is a whole range of issues,
starting from the moment when the police are informed
about an incident, that are leading to an attrition.
One concern, which we want to look at in the work
we are doing this year and into next year, is how
potential offenders are being dealt with and brought to
justice, the interface between the Crown Prosecution
Service and the police, and in particular the number of
referrals being made to the CPS by the police and the
advice on charging that the CPS is providing to the
police.
We have not done the detailed work on that yet, but
the issue is about the interface between the police and
the CPS, the decision on whether a charge should be
brought on a domestic abuse-related case and whether—as
I often hear from the police when I go into forces—the
CPS has set the bar to secure a charge impossibly high.
Obviously, if we do not secure the charge then we will
never secure the conviction. We hear a lot of anecdotal
evidence in that regard, but I cannot give you specific,
hard and fast evidence.
One thing that we are doing next year, which may
help to shed a little bit of light on some of the areas
where we lose victims, is whether the issue of bail and
release under investigation is leading to a diminution in
attendance of those needed in court and an eventual
loss of victims who basically give up, because the timeframe
is spread out so long across a whole domestic abuse
case. We are doing a specific piece of work looking at
the effect of release under investigation postal requisitions,
so that we can see the real reasons behind the elongation
of the time factors and the changes around safeguarding
that may flow as a result.
Q66 Wendy Morton: Just one more quick question, if
I may: what difference do you think the 20,000 extra
police officers will make in the domestic abuse area?
Zoe Billingham: Obviously the uplift programme, as
it is called across policing, is welcomed, and 20,000
officers will address some or most of the reductions in
police officers since 2010. There has been a reduction in
police staff and police community support officers during
that period as well. The crux of that, in terms of how
the police respond to domestic abuse, will be where
those officers are deployed.
Of course, a whole lot of work will be done to ensure
that frontline preventive policing is enhanced through
the uplift programme. Although that is not a specific
investment in specialist domestic abuse officers, in our
Domestic Abuse Bill 42
view prevention is much better than cure. Clearly, however,
forces will need to look at their uplift—what they are
going to receive in terms of additional officers—and see
whether the stretch in the system that we have identified
can be alleviated by effective and smart deployment in a
whole range of roles across police forces. That is really a
matter for forces.
The Chair: We are into the last four minutes, so we
must have short questions and short answers.
Q67 Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op):
Good afternoon, Zoe. You have been in your role at
HMIC throughout the period of the domestic violence
disclosure scheme—Clare’s law. How would you characterise
its usage over the years and today?
Zoe Billingham: It is patchy, again, in terms of not
just right to know, but need to know. We encourage
forces. Each year, we have identified the patchy use,
knowledge and understanding of Clare’s law as something
that forces have responsibility to do more about in
terms of greater publicity and awareness-building. It is
another one of those powers that the police have and
that are available to them, but that are too often used
inconsistently.
Q68 Alex Norris: Do you think there are tools or
avenues open to us through the Bill to raise that tide?
Zoe Billingham: Obviously, putting this on to a statutory
footing will help, but two other things need to happen in
conjunction with that. First, it needs to be publicised
effectively in forces and across the broader population.
Secondly, it is absolutely imperative that forces have
sufficient resources to deal swiftly and effectively with
what we suspect will be an increased number of requests.
Our concern is that there might be a lot of local
publicity about, “Your force will do this”, or, “Come
forward and ask this”, only for victims to be let down
because forces have not geared themselves up with the
right resources. That would be our word of caution, but
as I say, putting it on a statutory footing is welcome.
Q69 Alex Norris: To turn to the role of the commissioner,
you mentioned that you can recommend that forces
make those changes but you cannot command them.
The commissioner will be a big ally for you in making
similar public statements about the lack of satisfaction
about certain local arrangements that will create significant
public pressure for reform. Do you have any reflections
on the commissioner’s role or ways that we could seek
to improve it or its relationship with you through the
Bill?
Zoe Billingham: We welcome the introduction of the
commissioner’s role. I have met her briefly. We need to
ensure that we, as an independent inspectorate, work
closely alongside the commissioner, that we do not
duplicate our efforts, and that our learning from inspections
is passed to her and vice versa, so that we can continue
to set the expectation that is required of police forces. I
expect us to work in close concert on that.
Q70 Victoria Atkins: On the point about independence,
questions have been asked today about the commissioner
reporting to the Home Office. You are appointed by the
Home Office, or HMIC is. What are your thoughts on
your independence?
43 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
Zoe Billingham: I would say that we are independent.
As you know, Minister, we make recommendations
without fear or favour. We are very happy to make
recommendations directed at the Home Office and have
often done so in our work around domestic abuse. We
expect action to be taken not only by police forces or
police and crime commissioners but by Departments. I
feel extremely independent in my role. I suspect that
that will be reflected in the role of the Domestic Abuse
Commissioner as well. The fact that I have a relationship
with the Home Office does not undermine my personal
statutory independence as an HMI or our organisation’s
independence.
The Chair: I am grateful for your evidence today,
Ms Billingham. Thank you very much. We will move on
to our next witness, Nazir Afzal.
Examination of Witness
Nazir Afzal gave evidence.
3 pm
The Chair: Welcome to the evidence session this
afternoon. For the record, please introduce yourself
and state your job title.
Nazir Afzal: I am Nazir Afzal. One of my roles is
independent national advisor to the Welsh Government
on what they call VAWDASV: Violence against women,
domestic abuse and sexual violence. Previously I was
chief prosecutor, and I led for 10 years on violence
against women and girls for the Crown Prosecution
Service.
Q71 Victoria Atkins: This witness was requested by
Plaid Cymru, but I will step into the shoes of Ms Saville
Roberts and ask a general question. How will you work
together with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner to
maximise the impact of the two roles across Wales?
Nazir Afzal: I met with her yesterday, and I very
much welcome her. I think she is sitting behind us right
now. Obviously, there are restrictions on what she can
do: there are devolved areas for the Welsh Government,
and she is not permitted to comment on or analyse
those areas. There are reserved areas where she can. We
agreed yesterday to collaborate, and I know we will do
that from here on in. There are opportunities for the
sharing of good practice, and there are opportunities
for commissioning joint research and things like that. I
have no doubt whatsoever that our relationship will be
very fruitful.
Q72 Alex Norris: When we looked at this in the
Home Affairs Committee, we made the final judgment,
after a lot of back and forth, to pursue a Welsh
approach—to introduce an Act to deal with violence
against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence, as
was done in Wales. That is at the nub of the conversation
about whether there needs to be a gendered definition.
Whenever that is raised, there is the obvious reply about
not missing out male victims and survivors. How does it
work in Wales? What comfort can you give us that a
gendered approach is practical but works for everybody?
Nazir Afzal: We live in the real world, and it is
acknowledged that 84%, or thereabouts, of victims are
female. Much of the men-on-men abuse, for example,
is men abusing, and the vast majority of perpetrators
Domestic Abuse Bill 44
are male. When you recognise that, it does not mean
that you ignore male victims. The Welsh Government
have been working closely with organisations that support
male victims, and I have no doubt that that will continue.
Being one thing does not mean that you have to stop
being another. That should not cause any problem for
us in England and Wales, because it certainly has not
caused any problems in Wales.
Q73 Alex Norris: What positives has it brought?
Nazir Afzal: There is a substantial learning. For
example, there are people working in the male victim
sector who previously felt that they were being ignored
and not listened to and that perhaps—I think this was
underlying your question—they were second-class victims.
What they have picked up from those who are suffering
has informed the Welsh Government’s work in relation
to female victims. There is substantial good practice in
that area, which perhaps would not have been picked up
had we not engaged with them in the way that we are
doing.
Q74 Gillian Keegan: I am quite intrigued by this role.
Will you give us some examples of how it has helped to
improve the response to domestic abuse in Wales, and
how that might be seen from the viewpoint of the victim
or survivor?
Nazir Afzal: Do you mean the national advisor role?
Gillian Keegan: Yes, the national advisor role.
Nazir Afzal: I job share the role with a colleague of
mine. I do two days and she does three days. It is a
statutory role that was created by the Violence against
Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales)
Act 2015. Going back to a question you put to Her
Majesty’s inspector, independence is a state of mind; it
does not have to say “independent” in the Act. What we
have been able to do—I spoke to the Domestic Abuse
Commissioner about this yesterday—is to have access.
My colleague and I were able to meet with the whole
Welsh Cabinet a year ago and talk about this issue, and
about cross-Government work that needs to happen.
There are four director generals in the Welsh Government
in four Departments, and I meet them every quarter. I
would hope that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner
would have similar access. We know that this is not just
a policing issue; it is an education issue and a health
issue—it is cross-cutting—so it needs that kind of access.
We get that kind of access.
We are also advocates for the sector. When people
knew I was speaking today, I got several hundred emails
from the various NGOs, which do phenomenal work,
saying, “Raise this; raise that”—although there is not
enough time. We can do that advocacy for them or with
them within the Welsh Government. We are literally on
the road all the time—with the geography of Wales, you
have to be on the road all the time—in order to try to
understand the various issues that take place. We alert
the First Minister and his Government to those issues
in an intelligence-based, early way so that before it hits
the proverbial, some action can be taken. It works really
effectively.
As I said to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner
yesterday, if she gets the kind of access that we have
been given, if she gets the kind of freedom that we have,
and if she is able to enforce her independent way of
45 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
thinking—it goes without saying that she has enormous
credibility within the sector—all those things will make
her role really fulfilling. We have been able to look
internationally and look at best practice across the UK.
I think Wales lead the way—they will love me for saying
this. The VAWDASV Act was four years ago, and they
have put in place so many things.
One of the things I am concerned about with this Bill
is what is underneath it—that is, the implementation
strategy. Wales has grasped that and there is a phenomenal
implementation strategy. There is the national training
framework; you name it, there are all sorts of things
underneath which will enable, and are enabling, us to
deliver on the Act. We are there as critical friends to the
Welsh Government and also to the Home Office here.
We are able to share learning from Wales, and also to
the Scottish Government.
Q75 Carolyn Harris: I agree entirely that the Welsh
Government have got it spot on: they are superb. I have
long followed your career and admired your work and it
was an excellent appointment by the Welsh Government—
but then, it would be. We have got such a good structure
in Wales. Will what is proposed in this Bill clash with
what we have got, or will it link in with it? Are we doing
things differently or better in the Welsh plan than is
intended in this Bill? How can we make both of them
the best that they can be?
Nazir Afzal: Somebody will die or be severely injured
in Wales today because of domestic abuse. There is no
way on earth that I am going to be complacent, and
neither should we. There will be victims with every
minute of every day. On that basis, what progress has
Wales made? There are issues with the Bill that I am
happy to share with you, but implementation is key. If
you do not have leadership from the top, it will not
happen.
Let me give you another example. The First Minister
has asked for his whole Cabinet to get training. Then he
asked all the Assembly Members to get training, and he
asked all their support staff to get training—to the
point where, in Wales, 170,000 people have now been
trained under the 2015 Act. Some 4,000 professionals—that
is, pretty much every professional in the ambulance
service and police service—have been trained. I encourage
you as Members of Parliament, if you have not done so,
to undergo some training to enable you to spot the
signs. If leaders are doing it, it comes down from that. If
you have done it, others who work for you and with you
will do it as well.
With the implementation strategy, the amount of
guidance that has been produced is second to none.
There are guidelines for governors of universities and
governors of further education institutions; there are
guidelines on elder abuse, which I think you mentioned
earlier on; and there are guidelines on children as victims.
That is what we call “ask and act” training guidance,
because in the legislation it invites professionals to ask
if something is not right and act upon it. That is all in
place.
A key point with regard to the Bill is that every local
authority has a public duty to compare and publish
annually their strategy on violence against women and
girls, domestic abuse and sexual violence, and to put
that out to the public and say, “This is what we are going
to do”, and be challenged on it. Unless you mandate
Domestic Abuse Bill 46
that and prescribe it, it is not going to happen. That is
why I encourage you—it is not too late—to do that in
the Domestic Abuse Bill. The Welsh Government have
done that. They have commissioning guidance, so that
every commissioner of services, and there are many,
knows how to approach it. There is guidance left, right
and centre.
In terms of what we still need to do, there is a big
issue that only the Treasury can help us with: sustainable
funding. From all the non-governmental organisations
that mailed you and me, you will know that on 31 March
they will not know whether they will have a job on
1 April. The people they service will not know whether
they will have a service on 1 April. Unless you have at
least an indication that your funding is x number of
years, you cannot plan. Cardiff and Vale has a seven-year
funding cycle. It tells everybody, “This is what we’re
going to give you this year,” and indicates what they are
going to get for the next six years. It can plan on that
basis, and that is what we would like the rest of Wales to
do. That is certainly what the NGOs in England would
prefer you to do.
Carolyn Harris: Thank you very much. Diolch yn
fawr.
Q76 Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con):
Thank you very much for coming to the Committee
today, and for your time. You mentioned that you had
communicated with the devolved Administration in
Scotland as well. Could you just elaborate on some of
the communication you had and on the sharing of best
practice, if any?
Nazir Afzal: It is premature, to be honest. The Scottish
Government do not have a role of the kind that you
have in the Bill, and that the Welsh Government have. It
would be premature of me to tell you what their plans
are. There is certainly good practice—there is no getting
away from it. When we talk about knife crime, we talk
about the public health approach in Glasgow, do we
not? If the public health approach can work for knife
crime, it can work for violence against women and domestic
abuse. The idea of being able to contain people who are
currently infected, for want of a better term, and then
prevent others from becoming so by dealing with the
infection—it is the same thing with domestic abuse.
They are applying the kind of approach we are taking
in Wales, and I hope England will do the same. There is
good learning, good sharing and good practice. The
Scottish Government are probably no further forward
than England in relation to structural governance issues,
but the will is certainly there.
I go back to what I said. Part of the problem, as HMI
indicated earlier, is that we have a bit of a perfect storm
right now. Scottish police numbers and health service
numbers have been reduced. There has been an impact
on all sorts of areas where previously the people were
there to provide that level of service. NGOs do not have
the same funding. If you have a significant increase in
victims, as we have had over the past three years or
thereabouts, there is nobody there to provide them with
the service. Scotland is no different from England and
Wales in that regard.
Q77 Luke Graham: No, I appreciate that. The section
of the Bill on the commissioner’s role talks about the
establishment of an advisory board. The Bill mandates
47 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
[Luke Graham]
that the board must include representatives from voluntary
organisations and healthcare professionals from England,
but there is nothing about Wales. Given that Wales is a
central part of the advisory board, would you like to be
on the board?
Nazir Afzal: Not me personally, because I have not
got the time, but I certainly think that Wales should be
on it. It is an England and Wales board, even if there
are reserved and devolved areas. I cannot see any reason
why Wales should not be present. We currently engage
with the Home Office even though, technically, it does
not have responsibility for certain parts of what we do
in Wales. I see no problem with that.
Q78 Luke Graham: This is important, and I do not
want to put you in a constitutional hotspot, but devolved
does not mean separate. A lot of the Bill is meant to be
set by the UK Parliament. Some Members will push for
it to be extended in certain areas to Scotland. As I have
experienced with my constituents, domestic abuse in
relationships does not respect county or other political
boundaries. Do you agree that—framed as the Bill is
about sharing best practice, sharing standards, ensuring
that certain standards are reinforced throughout the
entire United Kingdom and ensuring that analysis is
shared throughout the United Kingdom—this is a good
space for the Bill to play in, and that it can respect
devolution within the United Kingdom and the role of
central Government?
Nazir Afzal: Yes, 100%. The victim referral pathways
could involve a victim from—well, I had one a long time
ago in London who was moved to Inverness. If we do
not have common practices, and so forth, rest assured
that that would be a recipe for disaster. You need to
have an understanding across borders, despite the fact
that, jurisdictionally, there will be differences.
Q79 Vernon Coaker: In your evidence to us just a few
minutes ago, you said that there were some issues with
the Bill and that you would be happy to share them with
the Committee. Could you please do that?
Nazir Afzal: Absolutely. The main one is the public
duty. We have found in Wales that unless you mandate
it, it does not happen. Furthermore, unless you ring-fence
it, it does not happen either. Our experience—the experience
across England and Wales, actually—has been that if
people have made cuts, they have made them in areas
they see as soft, and strangely, they see this area as soft.
That is ridiculous, frankly, but none the less that is what
they do. Unless you say—we have not said this in
Wales—“0.5% of your income must go on whatever it
is” and ring-fence it, it does not happen.
The public duty side of it certainly needs to be
clearer, because people do opt out. One third of mental
health trusts in England do not have a strategy that
deals with domestic abuse. Given the number of victims
who will be suffering either as victims or, potentially, as
perpetrators, that is scandalous. My experience tells me
that unless you mandate these things, it does not happen.
That is issue No. 1, and I clearly think that is right.
Black and minority ethnic victims have been let down.
Do you know how many independent domestic violence
advisors in England and Wales work specifically with
BME people? There are four.
Domestic Abuse Bill 48
Q80 Vernon Coaker: Say that again. Four?
Nazir Afzal: There are four IDVAs in this country
who are specially trained to work with BME victims.
Given the population, that is not right.
Q81 Vernon Coaker: How many are there altogether,
do you know?
Nazir Afzal: Hundreds. That issue needs addressing.
There is also the rural-urban thing—I have said this
specifically about Wales, but it is true of England as
well. If you are a victim in a rural area, the perpetrator
is probably known to everybody. To access support, you
need transport—the support is not available locally—but
we give everybody the same amount of funding. We
give an NGO in Birmingham the same funding as we
give one somewhere in Shropshire, but the one in Shropshire
probably needs more funding per person than the one in
Birmingham. We need to address that. Again, I do not
know how you do that, but it needs to come from the
top down, rather than the bottom up.
There are issues around refuge funding and refuge
services. My personal view—it is the Wales view, too—is
that the safest place for a victim is his or her home. The
refuge should always be seen as an emergency, rather
than as the first port of call, which is what it is commonly
seen as. There are very few refuges with provision for
children. You wait until mid-December, when it is coming
up to Christmas: they will be turning away children left,
right and centre, but what happens? They end up in
emergency accommodation or going back to their abuser,
because the support is just not available to them. Strange
as it may sound, when I spoke to the Welsh Cabinet, one
of the environmental Ministers mentioned pets. I was
not aware of this. Victims do not leave home because of
their pet. Apart from the Dogs Trust, as I understand it,
there is very limited provision for animals in those
circumstances, so they end up remaining with the
perpetrator. Something needs to be done about refuge
funding. It goes back to the sustainable funding issue I
mentioned earlier, which needs to be addressed.
There are bigger issues. Your colleague, Sarah Champion,
mentioned early marriage or child marriage yesterday.
There are a substantial number of victims. I know the
Minister asked for more detail, but my personal view is
that you should ban child marriage under the age of 18.
Too many 16 and 17-year-olds are forced into marriage,
and too many suffer significant abuse at that age. Unless
you put an age limit of 18 on marriage, you are not
going to be able to prevent that from happening. The
Bill offers you that opportunity.
Q82 Vernon Coaker: Do you know what the estimates
are? How many marriages are there?
Nazir Afzal: There are roughly 200 marriages of
17-year-olds every year.
Q83 Vernon Coaker: Do you know what it is for
16-year-olds? The Minister will be able to get that.
Nazir Afzal: I do not know. The Minister will probably
know better than I do.
Q84 Vernon Coaker: Was that figure of 200 for England
and Wales?
Nazir Afzal: Yes, but a lot of religious marriages are
not registered. A lot more than 200 are not registered
because they are religious marriages.
49 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
Q85 Vernon Coaker: Have the Government made an
estimate of the number of non-registered marriages?
Nazir Afzal: I do not know. Again, the Minister will
know better than I do. I have dealt with cases, and the
most amazing ones—the most bizarre, horrible ones—
involved people who were forced into marriage at 16 and
17. Some of them died at the age of 19 and 20. There is
a gap that needs to be addressed, and maybe the legislation
could do that.
There is another area in which I would agree with
other campaigners. Twelve years ago, I met with somebody
called Iain Duncan Smith—I don’t know if you know
him—and he was running a campaign with Refuge
about driven suicide. A lot of victims of domestic abuse
are driven to commit suicide, and as it currently stands,
there is no law that can hold somebody to account for
that. I tried to bring one in back then, and the Court of
Appeal said that we could, but we were not able to
succeed. You probably know the fact that two women
are murdered every week in domestic abuse cases, but
you probably do not know that 10 women kill themselves
every week.
Vernon Coaker: Ten women—
Nazir Afzal: Ten women, every week, in England and
Wales will kill themselves because of domestic abuse.
That is Refuge’s figure.
The Chair: The Minister wants to come in on this
point.
Victoria Atkins: I just want to clarify that the latest
year for which we have figures on marriage is 2016. Of
the around 500,000 people who entered opposite-sex
marriages in that year, 179 were aged 16 or 17 years old.
I just wanted to clarify that for the record.
The Chair: I am going to bring in Carolyn Harris to
ask some questions. If anybody else wishes to speak,
please indicate now.
Q86 Carolyn Harris: Let me pick up on two things
you have said. First, is religious marriage a growing
issue? Somebody came to see me last week who had
been in what she thought was a marriage. When she
went to get a divorce because of domestic violence, her
marriage certificate was in Arabic. She had been married
under sharia law and was not actually married.
Secondly, you talked about IDVAs; is there a programme
in Wales for having IDVAs in hospitals, specifically for
elderly people? I was in A&E with my son, who had
pneumonia a couple of weeks ago, when I heard the
nurse at the next bed asking a young girl if her problem
was because of domestic violence. Can you tell us a bit
more about that?
Nazir Afzal: The second one is easy. Yes, there is a
programme to recruit more IDVAs. It is a bit haphazard
because they are employed by different agencies—health,
police and crime commissioners and so on—but there is
a significant programme to increase the numbers. There
was a dip in the mid-2010s, for all sorts of resource
reasons.
On the first question, there is another campaign,
which is about religious marriages also having to be
certified—that is, to become marriages recognised by
British law. I support that, too. You have given one example;
Domestic Abuse Bill 50
I can probably give you several hundred others of
people who did not know that they were married. In
any event, if these people were married, their ability to
seek a divorce is challenging, to say the least, and abuse
is often tolerated in such circumstances. There is a role
for the state to say, “If you enter into a religious
marriage, you should also have a civil marriage.” There
is some good practice around that—for example, just
up the road in the Regent’s Park mosque you have to
have the religious marriage and a civil marriage at the
same time. Why can they not do that anywhere else?
I absolutely agree with you on that.
Carolyn Harris: Thank you.
The Chair: Are there any further questions from
Members?
Nazir Afzal: Can I just say one more thing about
release under investigation, because I forgot?
Q87 The Chair: I will just see whether there are any
further questions. No, there are not, so feel free to
continue.
Nazir Afzal: Her Majesty’s inspector mentioned release
under investigation. The previous time I gave evidence
to the Joint Committee, Lord Blair was here, and he and
I agree on this. The Bill should specifically say that
domestic abuse is excluded from the provision on release
under investigation. There is tons of evidence already
out there—you may want to get your own, Minister—that
shows that there are suspects waiting for a long, long
time before a decision but, worse still, that there are
potential victims waiting for a long, long time, who are
under enormous pressure to go back to their abuser or
potential abuser, and who lose interest and so on because
the process takes such a long time. If you had bail with
conditions, it would offer protection, and it also concentrates
minds in respect of decision making. We did not anticipate
it happening when the Act was passed, but my personal
view and, I think, that of anybody in the sector is that
we ought to exclude domestic abuse from that provision.
The Chair: Do Members have any further questions?
If not, we are grateful to you, Mr Afzal, for your
contribution, and will bring your session to an end.
Examination of Witnesses
Sally Noden and Eleanor Briggs gave evidence.
3.24 pm
Q88 The Chair: I am grateful for your attendance at
this evidence session. For the record, the maximum time
we have for this session is until 4 o’clock. Please introduce
yourselves for the benefit of the Committee.
Sally Noden: My name is Sally Noden and I am a
children’s service manager in Newcastle.
Eleanor Briggs: I am Eleanor Briggs and I am head
of policy and research at Action for Children.
Q89 Victoria Atkins: Welcome to the Committee. It
would perhaps help the Committee if we could hear a
little bit about your work in Newcastle, Ms Noden.
Sally Noden: In Newcastle, I oversee a cluster of
services, but one of them is called Breaking the Cycle.
This is a service that was specifically designed by us
several years ago, when we saw a gap in recovery services
51 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
for children. We work with children between the ages of
four and 16 who have experienced domestic abuse, and
we offer them one-to-one counselling.
The way the piece of work is done is that we normally
meet the non-abusing partner—normally the mum—and
we do a session with her, and then we bring the child in.
One of the big points of the model—this is why it is a
specialist service—is that we name why the children are
there. It is named. That is actually a really big issue for a
parent who has spent a long time thinking that they are
protecting the child. They realise that the child’s
behaviour—the traumatic behaviour that they are displaying
—is because of the domestic abuse that they have
experienced. We need to spend time with the non-abusing
partner, getting them to understand their story and
what has happened to their child.
We then offer up to 10 sessions with the child, and
they are child-led sessions with the counsellor, using a
variety of tools that the counsellor is extremely skilled
at using: sometimes they use play, sometimes they use
games and words, and they do special box work with
the young people. We then have a review session with
the child and the non-abusing partner and parent. Some
of that is very much around looking at their relationship,
because children can be really angry. Suddenly they can
be angry and confused, and the relationship between
the parent and the child can be really broken, so we
need to do some work to improve that parent-child
relationship and have an understanding on both sides.
That is the work that we do up in Newcastle at the
moment.
Q90 Victoria Atkins: Thank you very much, Ms Noden;
Ms Briggs, please do not think I am going to leave you
out. I am going to get straight to the point. The Committee
is considering the definition, and at the moment the
definition is limited to from the age of 16 onwards.
What are your views on that age being in the definition?
Perhaps you can go first, Ms Briggs.
Eleanor Briggs: It is certainly a really complex issue
and something that we have thought really hard about
and discussed in great detail with other children-sector
organisations. Ultimately, we agree with the Government’s
decision to go for the 16 age limit. We talked in detail to
frontline practitioners, such as Sally and others, and to
our safeguarding experts, and the final decision we
made was that because abuse of someone under 16 is
child abuse, we did not want to muddy the waters. We
wanted to keep it absolutely clear that under 16 it is
child abuse. Also, the age of consent is 16, so that is
another factor to consider.
We do recognise, though, the need for support for
children and young people in romantic relationships
under 16 where abuse happens, and we warmly welcome
the recommendation from the Joint Committee around
the need for a Government review to look at those
relationships. One thing we would stress is that the
experience from when the age limit in the definition was
lowered from 18 to 16 showed that adult responses are
not necessarily the right ones, so a different model
could be needed for 16 and 17-year-olds. We would ask
that that review consider 16 and 17-year-olds as well.
Sally has extensive experience of what services work for
young people and how they need to be different.
Domestic Abuse Bill 52
Sally Noden: It is great that we are looking at it, but
we need to recognise those relationships and we need to
look at services through the lens of a young person or
teenager. An adult service may not meet those needs. In
Newcastle, we have a service called West End Women
and Girls Centre, which has peer educators, and those
peer educators are young people who have been through
abusive relationships and are now trained to be peer
educators with other young people. That sort of service
is really important.
I have experience of a young person working in a
service. I was in a children’s centre and I was running
the Freedom programme, which is a social educational
programme. This young person was 17 and I suggested
that she came on to the programme, but there were
women who were much older than her and their experiences
were very different to her experience, and she did not
feel as valid. I learned from that mistake. She did not
feel valid because her relationship was an 18-month
relationship and she was listening to women who had
been in abusive relationships for 30 years. I did a lot of
work with her after that. We absolutely need to recognise
that there are abusive relationships, but we need to have
the right responses for them.
Q91 Carolyn Harris: For me, children who experience
domestic violence are victims—there are no two ways
about it—and we know that it can be a vicious circle.
What more can we do to break the cycle of victims
becoming perpetrators?
Sally Noden: We need to have the right services and
we need to invest in services for some of our young
victims. In Newcastle, we have one of the only specialist
services. In the past four months, I have had 59 referrals,
but I have one and a half counsellors. In the sense that
the resources are not there to do the work, we need to
look at some peer education work and work on what
healthy relationships are about. We need to look at
some early intervention work, but then there need to be
those specialist services to help break the cycle. There
are a number of fantastic programmes out there, such
as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education programme
and the Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together programme,
but again, from my experience in Newcastle, we had the
programme running, the funding stopped, and it has not
run again. It might come back again. We need to have
the right resources to have the right community responses.
Q92 Carolyn Harris: So the work is being done in
silos, without being all joined up. Are we not all aiming
for the same thing, or are we working to different
agendas?
Sally Noden: There is some very good joining up. I sit
on the violence against women and girls strategic group
in Newcastle with a whole host of services, and we work
really well together. However, there are not the resources
to continue the work that we need to do.
Eleanor Briggs: That is where the Bill offers a real
opportunity. Two things can happen in the Bill that
would contribute. The first is to put children as victims
into the definition. Our view is that that being in the
statutory guidance is not strong enough. We can talk in
more detail about the definition.
Secondly, the duty on the Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government should be extended.
We really welcome the duty and the fact that it will look
53 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
at accommodation-based support but, as the previous
witness said, we really feel that the refuge should be the
person’s home and that the support needs to be there in
the community for children. That will build into the
whole cycle: if we get the support for children early on,
they will learn what healthy relationships look like. We
know that Sally’s excellent service in Newcastle is Big
Lottery funded and only has two more years to go, so
what happens to it after that? If we had the statutory
duty extended out, we could have secure, proper and
long-term funding for services for children, and that
would help to break the cycle.
Q93 Carolyn Harris: Are local authorities keen to
support you financially or with services in kind, or is it a
battle just to get the money to keep going?
Sally Noden: It is a battle to get the money to keep
going. As Eleanor said, our money comes from the Big
Lottery Fund. I work really closely with Safe Newcastle,
with their offices, and they are really supportive—they
were supportive of our Big Lottery bid—but they are
not able to give us the funding.
Eleanor Briggs: And that is one of our concerns. If
the MHCLG duty comes in as designed at the moment,
just for accommodation-based support, the local authorities
will be under pressure to fund refuge and accommodation-
based support. Obviously, we see the need for that, and
it is very important, but the duty needs to be wider,
because if the funding is all going into that, funding will
come away from non-statutory services, as we have seen
with children’s services. Under the Children Act 1989,
statutory services are still being provided, with increased
money going into them, but the funding has come away
from the non-statutory services—the early help services.
Although we welcome commitments to funding for the
new duty, which is fantastic, this will be in law for
the long, long term and we cannot guarantee that the
funding will always be there. That is why the legislation
needs to be right and why we need to have a statutory
duty for both accommodation-based and, crucially,
community services that include children and young
people.
Carolyn Harris: I am sold. Thank you.
Q94 Sarah Newton: We are all united in wanting to
break the cycle. The evidence is overwhelming that
young people who are exposed to domestic abuse, coercive
control or violence are likely to be perpetrators or
victims themselves. As the Government are investing a
lot of money in schools on good relationship education,
I am concerned that children will start to realise that
what they are seeing at home is not a good relationship,
but they will think that is what love looks like because
that is what their mum and dad do with partners they
see. In the context of what the commissioner and services
are to do, what should we do to make sure that that part
of the Government’s work in the Department for Education
is linked to the sorts of the service you you provide and
the possibilities in the Bill?
Sally Noden: I think it is about linking up with
community services—making sure that there are the
resources within community services. We talked about
Operation Encompass, which I think is fantastic, but
it needs to go further. There needs to be the support. It
is great to do the silent monitoring or to enable the
teacher to help that child through the day, but are we
Domestic Abuse Bill 54
actually saying, “It’s okay—it’s okay to go back home”?
We have to be honest: children will be going back home,
so there needs to be an open discussion and resources to
be able to work with a child to make sense of that and
enable them to be resilient. There are services to support
women who are in abusive relationships and plan to
leave, and there is support to enable them while they are
in that relationship. We need that for children as well.
Q95 Sarah Newton: I was thinking along slightly
different lines—sorry if I did not make myself clear.
Again in my constituency, there is another Big Lottery-
funded youth work-based project where young people
are coming to realise that they are living in a home with
domestic abuse and violence, whereas before they did
not really understand that that was what was going on.
The youth workers are there to make sure that the
parents have a conversation and that they are being
supported to address their relationship issues. That is
more what I was thinking of. Is that something we
should be looking at, so that rather than the child being
identified as being in an abusive home, it is more that
the child themselves identifies that they live in an abusive
home? What support can we then give to the parents?
Sally Noden: Absolutely. We have to then be very
mindful about making sure that we are not keeping
children in the abusive relationship, and about whether
the parents are willing to do that piece of work or
whether someone will continue to be controlling. It is
really important to have that open dialogue, and name
it. There are a number of projects, such as the Helping
Hands project, that you can work with children on, and
I know of a number of youth work projects working
with young people, but you are right to ask whether
they are really doing the joining up. We need to look at
that further.
Q96 Alex Norris: What do you think are the implications
for children of a proposed legal duty on local authorities
to provide accommodation-based support?
Eleanor Briggs: I have touched on that already. Although
we really welcome the duty and see it as a step forward,
we think that, as it stands, it is not adequate and will not
provide the support that children and young people,
and adult victims and perpetrators, need. We welcome
the focus in the duty as drafted on children’s support,
and we welcome the fact that children’s social care will
sit on the board, although we would like to see DFE on
the national steering group as well.
We need to face up to the reality that most victims
will not be in a refuge. That is a positive thing—people
should not need to leave their home to get support. It
seems logical to us that if you are getting all the local
partners together, including children, to look at an issue
and how they are going to respond to domestic abuse,
you should not limit that to accommodation-based
support. It should be a holistic, expanded duty where
they can look at what support we need in the community
as well.
There is a particular concern about refuges and the
amount of support, because of the fact that people are
being turned away and that children are being turned
away. From what Sally has said, and from what we see
in our own research with Stirling University, we know
that those issues are also there with community-based
services. Currently, there is a real postcode lottery for access.
55 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
Research that we did with Stirling University and local
authorities showed that in two thirds of areas there
were barriers to children and young people accessing
community services. Also in two thirds of areas the
funding issues that we have already spoken about were
present, with projects being funded by unstable funding
streams and not knowing what their future was. In
10% of local authorities, there were actually no services
for children and young people, and only two had services
for children in the early years. There is a real problem
around adequate services for children and young
people in the community, which the Domestic Abuse
Commissioner picked up this morning.
The duty is a real opportunity, which we welcome,
but to do its job properly, it needs to be widened. In that
research with Stirling University, local authorities said
that there is an absence of guidance, that they are not
sure what they are supposed to be providing, and,
unusually, that they would welcome a duty to give them
that clarity about what is wanted. Of course, they will
need it to be properly funded, but having that clarity
would be a real step forward for everyone.
I have already addressed our fear that unintentionally
the duty as it stands might have a negative impact on
some of those vital community services for children and
young people, particularly given the funding pressure
that we know local authorities are under. MHCLG has
said that the duty will not have an impact on community-
based services, but no detail was provided about how or
why that is the case. We therefore echo the Joint Committee’s
recommendation that the duty needs to look at how
community-based support can be provided. We know
from the services that Sally provides how important
that support is in helping children to recover and preventing
further abuse in the next generation.
Q97 Alex Norris: Is anywhere doing it really well at
the moment? Postcode lotteries have winners as well as
losers. Does anywhere model the sort of thing that you
are talking about?
Eleanor Briggs: Yes. The research that we did with
Stirling has three different case studies of how local
authorities are operating. One is high functioning, one
is doing okay, and one is a really poorly functioning
local authority. We will happily share that to show you
how the different models are working. We hope that
through an expanded duty everyone could get up to
that high-functioning model.
Q98 Luke Graham: My question builds on those of
some of my colleagues regarding how children who
experience domestic abuse link with potential fostering
services, the Department for Work and Pensions, and
future education opportunities. Having had a number
of constituents and some family go through a similar
process, I know that there is a lot of opportunity to fall
through gaps. What, in your view, are the elements of
best practice? If they are not in the Bill already, we can
try to add them. Certainly, we can share such best
practice more widely, supporting an individual in an
abusive situation and then connecting them with DWP
services, education and other opportunities.
Sally Noden: I can talk about a case study. I think this
will answer your question—tell me if it does not. Within
our service, we had a referral of a sibling group. There is
a waiting list, and by the time of the referral one of the
children had been removed—in fact, all three of them
Domestic Abuse Bill 56
had been removed and one was in a foster placement on
their own. We continued with that work; our original
piece of work was with the foster carer and the young
person.
We linked up with children’s social care and with the
foster carer, and we met with mum, because the young
child was potentially going to go back home—so we
linked up in terms of what sort of therapeutic support
we could offer this young person. In fairness, children’s
social care linked up with us as well and ensured that we
were speaking to the right people. We needed to speak
to the foster carer. We might have spoken only to mum,
or we might not have spoken to her.
The big piece of work that we did with that young
person was trying to work out their emotional responses
to the uncertainty that they were going to go through.
That was a huge piece of work, because they did not
know whether they were going to go home. At one
point, the courts were looking at whether dad was a
potential caregiver. Dad had been the perpetrator of
domestic violence towards mum. We had to do some
work, although the child was not really in recovery
because they still had lots of uncertainties; they really
needed some therapeutic support in working out their
emotions and their lack of knowledge about what was
going on.
I do not know whether that quite answers your question.
We ensured that we connected up, and doing so has to
be everybody’s responsibility. It is the same with adult
services. Often you see the adult presented, and you do
not connect up whether the child will have to move
school, and what will happen to them and their education.
That is why it is so important to have children named as
victims in the Bill, because people then have to connect
it up, from all services.
Eleanor Briggs: I would add that if we got a wider
duty, looking more broadly than accommodation-based
services, that would help because you would have the
board and representatives from all relevant partners
across the local authority on that board looking at their
joined-up response. That would get them talking, and
would be such an opportunity. If they were looking
more widely than just at accommodation, they would
pick up on those issues.
Q99 Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab): It all sounds a bit
precarious. A lot of excellent work is going on, but it is
not certain that it will continue in a consistent way. You
seem to be putting quite a lot of eggs in the basket of
the wider duty, which will be a way to drive resource
and underpin greater consistency, so that we are not just
dependent on lottery funding that is falling. Can you
explain how you think that will work?
Eleanor Briggs: I suppose the way the duty will be set
up is that the boards will come together and do an
assessment of what is happening their area; what the
needs are and how they can commission services to
meet those needs. I think the current version of it will
look at accommodation-based needs, whereas the way
that we envisage it, they will look at the whole spectrum.
With other organisations, we would like to look at
perpetrators as well, so that we can get a proper picture.
We are looking to end this problem and that also
involves support for perpetrators. They look at the
whole thing as a holistic issue and look at where support
is needed. Obviously, that demands a good risk assessment
57 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
and the right people being there, but proper funding is
also key. For this duty to be in place will need proper
funding, so that once the assessment is done, the right
services can be commissioned and funded properly so
that that support is in place.
Q100 Nic Dakin: We heard from the earlier witness
that these sorts of services are often seen as low-hanging
fruit when pressures are on budgets.
Eleanor Briggs: Absolutely. That is why for us this is
the part of the Bill that offers us the best chance we have
to get those services. People have already talked about
how something gets done when you make it statutory.
When there is an obligation, it will be provided. We
want these services to be a statutory obligation to
provide support to children and families and then we
will see it funded. As I mentioned, we have seen children’s
services, where there is no statutory obligation. Those,
as you say, are the low-hanging fruit and the ones that
go when there is a problem.
You say we are putting all our eggs in one basket.
This is absolutely key for us and the best way that we
can see at the moment to secure vital support. We also
definitely want to see children in the definition on the
face of the Bill. That is really important in getting a
response from all services. Zoe has already mentioned
that the police are doing much better, which is great to
hear, but we know from studies abroad that the police
have responded to children much better when children
are named as victims in the definition of domestic
abuse, so we want to see that here as well.
Q101 Wendy Morton: Thank you for joining us today.
I want to touch on the Children Act. You are probably
aware that the Government are considering the pre-
legislative scrutiny Joint Committee recommendation
on the definition of harm in the Children Act and
whether it should be amended to recognise the impact
on children of coercive control. What are your thoughts
on that? What do you think the impact of such an
amendment will be? Also, do you foresee any unintended
consequences of singling out one form of harm?
Eleanor Briggs: We really welcome that. We were
really pleased to see the Joint Committee recommendation.
The Children Act is a fantastic piece of legislation. We
are excited its 30th anniversary is coming up next month.
It is a great piece of legislation because it has adapted
and changed as things have moved forward. As part of
that, in 2002, the definition of harm was changed to
include impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the
ill-treatment of another. That was added in relation to
domestic abuse, so that recognition was there. We support
the Joint Committee’s recommendation for it to be
absolutely clear that coercive control is included. Our
research with Stirling University, that I referred to,
showed that the local authorities we spoke to felt that
social workers still did not recognise coercive control
and how dangerous it can be. Research shows that
children really do suffer when coercive control is going
on in the house. It is also very high risk. There is a high
chance of very serious violence related to coercive control,
so we support that widening.
We would also like to see the definition change slightly
so that it talks about children seeing or hearing—
experiencing—the domestic abuse that goes on. This point
was powerfully made when we went to see one of our
Domestic Abuse Bill 58
services. We did not prompt them or say anything when
we did our initial research, but one of the service
managers said: “Children don’t witness domestic abuse,
they experience it.” She was absolutely passionate about
that. They are not sitting there as some kind of secondary
part of it; they absolutely are experiencing that. The Bill
provides an opportunity to get that into the Children’s
Act and to link it to the definition in the Bill. I am not
concerned about it limiting, because from my understanding
it was introduced in 2002 to be around getting domestic
abuse in there. To get that right and to make sure it is up
to date with the Domestic Abuse Bill, now feels like a
real opportunity.
The Chair: Three more Members wish to speak and
we have just under 10 minutes, so questions and answers
need to be relatively quick.
Q102 Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West)
(Lab): I want to expand on mental health issues. Do
you work with child and adolescent mental health
services?
Sally Noden: Yes. Actually, over a third of our referrals
come from CAMHS, and I also oversee a family support
service within Early Help. We work really closely with
our CAMHS colleagues, because mental health is a real
issue for our young people and for parents.
Q103 Eleanor Smith: I know we have the NHS in the
commissioning body, but do you think there should be
something for people with mental health issues, particularly
children, in the commissioning body?
Sally Noden: Yes, I think so. I do not know whether
Eleanor would answer that better than I would.
Eleanor Briggs: We have not done a lot of work on
this, to be honest, but we can speak to others and come
back to you. I know that Hestia Housing will be appearing
before you on Thursday and that they have done a lot of
work looking at CAMHS. That is one of their asks, so it
might be good to ask them about that.
Q104 Gillian Keegan: It is fascinating to hear all
about the services, and the people of Newcastle are
obviously very lucky to have them. We heard in other
evidence sessions that not having services such as these
is often a barrier to women going further to seek out
more services, because they do not think their children
will get the services required. Do you have a view on
how widely available they are across England and Wales?
What difference will the role of the Domestic Abuse
Commissioner make in ensuring that when she and her
team are mapping all these services, it will help to
improve the availability of such services across the
country for children affected by domestic abuse?
Eleanor Briggs: The research that we did with Stirling
University looked at 30 local authorities and at where
services were available and where they were not. It
varies a lot. In two thirds of local authorities involved
in the study, there were some barriers to accessing
services. In 10% of areas, there were no support services
available. In a third of areas, access to services was
restricted by postcode. We know it really varies, which
relates to the lack of duty and the instability around
funding being an issue.
59 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
We really welcome the role of the commissioner, and
it is fantastic to see that. We welcome that she has a
specific remit on children and that she will have a child
advisor as part of her office. We would really like to see
children included in the statutory definition, just to
strengthen it and ensure that it is absolutely clear. We
would also like to see a bit more clarity in the wording—
when she looks at the provision of services, it should
include children’s services as well, because it could be a
real tool if it was absolutely clear that she is going to
look at that.
Q105 Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con):
Thank you very much for the interesting evidence. Can
I just come back to your point on people under 16 being
victims? The Bill states:
“Behaviour of a person (‘A’) towards another person (‘B’) is
‘domestic abuse’ if…A and B are each aged 16 or over”.
Are you suggesting it should be the case that, in that
scenario, B does not have to be aged 16 or over? Is that
what you were driving towards?
Eleanor Briggs: No.
Huw Merriman: Sorry—I beg your pardon.
Eleanor Briggs: It is really confusing, and we have
spent literally hours thinking about this. We want to
keep the domestic abuse age at 16, because of the issues
around child abuse that we have talked about. We are
working on various amendments. We would like to see
something added, probably under clause 1(5), so that
the impact of domestic abuse on children is recognised
in the definition. The offence would be between A and
B, who would be over 16, but then further down we
would have the impact recognised on children, as happens
at the moment in the Australian model. It is complicated
legally, but we are working with a number of barristers
and there are options that we are pursuing about how
that could fit.
Huw Merriman: I have probably missed it—if so, my
apologies—but, from a legal perspective, what would
you be wanting to occur as a result of that addition at
paragraph 5?
Eleanor Briggs: We would want it to be linking in to
the commissioner and to the new MHCLG duty that we
have there, so that it is absolutely clear. The notes with
the Bill also make very clear that this definition will be
used well beyond the scope of the Bill. It will be used by
frontline practitioners as well. We are really passionate
that that has to be in there, so that when healthcare or
the police are responding to a domestic abuse incident,
they are recognising children in there. We know from
the joint targeted area inspection reports that were done
in 2016 that a lot of adult services just did not ask any
questions about children. We think that we need it there
in a definition, so that everyone is aware. The Children’s
Act is great, but it does not do all of that, and a lot of
other practitioners will not be looking at it.
Huw Merriman: So it is a similar concept to the
discussion we were having about recognising the gender
imbalance and that being on the face, but there was also
a feeling that that could be covered by the statutory
guidance that comes out. Could that not be a place for
what you just described there with regard to children, in
terms of the guidance, and knock on to the providers of
the services?
Domestic Abuse Bill 60
Eleanor Briggs: We do welcome the guidance, and
that is definitely a step forward. But for us, that is not
going to be strong enough. We do not feel that you can
guarantee that everyone is going to read the guidance—or
when they see the guidance they might see children and
think, “Actually, that is just relevant to children’s services”.
If you have got it on the face of the Bill it will be much
stronger, and we can guarantee that we are getting the
proper response that we need.
Huw Merriman: Thank you.
The Chair: Do any Members wish to ask further
questions? I thank both witnesses for their contributions
today and discharge them from the Committee.
Examination of Witnesses
Emily McCarron and Jo Todd gave evidence.
3.57 pm
The Chair: Good afternoon, Emily and Jo, and thank
you for your attendance at the Committee this afternoon.
For the purposes of the record, could you introduce
yourselves, starting with Emily?
Emily McCarron: My name is Emily McCarron. I am
a policy manager at Age UK.
Jo Todd: I am Jo Todd. I am the chief executive at
Respect.
The Chair: We are grateful for your attendance today.
Victoria Atkins: Welcome. We are very interested to
understand the impact that domestic abuse can have on
older people. Ms McCarron, could you help us understand
what action you would like to see the Domestic Abuse
Commissioner take around older victims of domestic
abuse?
Emily McCarron: Certainly. When we are talking
about older people and domestic abuse, those circumstances
are often very much overlooked. We want older people who
experience domestic abuse to start getting the support
that they need. With this Bill, there is an opportunity to
remedy that.
The first thing of crucial importance is that we do not
know much about how much older people are experiencing
domestic abuse. We know that about 140,000 older
women and 74,000 older men experienced domestic
abuse in the past year—therefore more than 200,000
older people. We know also that they face many barriers
to reporting this abuse, so that figure is likely to be
much higher. Of particular importance is the fact that
data collection on the incidence of domestic abuse stops
at 74. We would like that to be changed and fixed on the
face of the Bill, so that data on domestic abuse is
collected for all ages, not just under the age of 74.
Victoria Atkins: Thank you. Ms Todd, will you explain
what Respect does as an organisation, and then help us
with the Drive project? I will then ask you about the
lessons that can be learned from that programme in
relation to the positive requirements in the domestic
abuse protection orders.
61 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
Jo Todd: Respect is a membership organisation. We
focus on perpetrators of domestic abuse, male victims
and young people, particularly those that use violence,
abuse and controlling behaviour in their family home
and in their intimate relationships.
The Drive partnership started off as a project between
three organisations: SafeLives, Social Finance and Respect.
It was to develop a service delivery model for perpetrators
causing high levels of harm. That partnership came
together about five years ago, and we have worked on
developing that service delivery model. It is now just
about to publish the third year evaluation report: the
University of Bristol has been our evaluator all the way
through. That has shown really positive findings. They
are not quite out yet, but they are all in the right
direction.
Part way through that partnership, we began to have
conversations about the strategic needs around perpetrators:
not just looking at one part of the perpetrator cohort—
the perpetrators causing the highest levels of harm—but
actually looking at what is needed by the whole cohort,
and what a good whole-system approach would look
like. We have reached out to others in the sector and
developed what we have called a call to action for a
perpetrator strategy. I can go into that in more detail if
you like, and can certainly submit it as written evidence.
We have a draft of that, and more than 60 organisations
have signed up to it.
It looks at the comprehensive strategic approach that
we think is needed for perpetrators. The spotlight has
been on victims for too long: keeping themselves safe,
keeping their children safe, keeping each other safe.
Perpetrators have been very invisible, or if they have
been visible the approach to them has not always worked.
We need an approach that stops domestic abuse happening.
That can work in different ways. You can have behaviour
change programmes. I have worked on behaviour
change programmes with perpetrators. There are men
out there who want to change, who recognise the harm
they are causing, and are motivated to change. They
may be the ones that Sarah Newton was mentioning,
who have grown up around domestic abuse. It is all
around them in their community, and they do it without
even considering that there are other ways of having
relationships.
We need to offer those people opportunities to change,
but we also need to be clear that we hold them to
account when those opportunities are there and are not
being taken by them, and that we have robust measures
in place through the criminal justice system and also
through a multi-agency approach that will stop their
abuse, and limit them from being able to be abusive and
controlling in their relationships through a series of
actions that different agencies can take. We call it disruption.
It can be housing, or it can be a police-led response.
Lots of children’s services are included. There are lots
of different ways in which agencies can disrupt perpetrators
and stop them causing harm.
Q106 Victoria Atkins: Thank you. Will you give us an
insight into the work, to add a bit of colour to the
picture you paint? For example, I visited the Drive
project in Croydon. What sort of cases will some of the
workers in Croydon or elsewhere be working on, and
how do they interact with those perpetrators? Also,
what happens with the victims at the same time?
Domestic Abuse Bill 62
Jo Todd: That is a really good point. When you work
with perpetrators, it should always be alongside a
programme of work that keeps victims safe too. That is
the approach taken by the Drive project. The victim will
always be offered support but also information about
the perpetrator, about whether or not he is changing
and about what the risk levels are, to help her make
decisions for herself.
The Drive project is a case management-based system.
There are case managers who will have perpetrators on
their books, who are all levels. Some of them might be
in and out of the criminal justice system; some of them
may be in prison and coming out. They work very
closely with the probation and prison services, as well as
the police. They are often resistant to change. They are
not in the place I was just speaking about, where they
have recognised their behaviour is a problem and they
want to change. They often have multiple needs themselves.
Sometimes that is trauma in their own lives; sometimes
it is drug and alcohol problems and mental health
problems. They are often, but not always—this is always
often, but not always—unemployed or have housing
problems or chaotic lifestyles that mean that engaging
in any kind of intervention might be difficult.
The caseworker will take a view on whether it is
appropriate to engage directly with that person, or
whether to work behind the scenes in a co-ordinated
multi-agency way to start tightening the net around
them and to start making sure that every agency is
aware of the problems they cause and the risk of harm
there is and can take appropriate action. Someone
mentioned earlier the carrot and the stick. It is very
much that. It is, “We will work with you if you work
with us, but if you won’t, we will use everything we can
to stop you being able to be abusive.”
Q107 Victoria Atkins: Just a last question. Referring
back to the domestic abuse protection orders and notices,
but particularly the orders, in the Bill, what are your
thoughts on the fact that judges can make negative
requirements—for example, “Do not go within 100 metres
of that address”—but also positive requirements, which
may include attending a perpetrator programme?
Jo Todd: It is true of any intervention around domestic
abuse that it has the possibility to solve the problem and
be safe and effective as an intervention, or to make
things worse. Whenever we are looking at developing
new things, and DAPOs and the positive order requirements
are one of those, we need to really think about how this
might raise the risk, as well as how it might reduce it.
There are concerns—about not putting enough resource
in and not being specific enough about what the positive
order requirements are—that mean it could go in the
wrong direction. We are hoping to work with you and
possibly put amendments in to make sure that that does
not happen.
With certain things, such as the specified responsible
person who recommends to the courts what should be
included in the DAPO and then is responsible for
monitoring that requirement, there is not at the moment
the same level of specification about whose that role
should be. The Government may already have plans
and thoughts around who would fill that role: whether
it be probation or police, I am not sure. However, at
the moment, that is not clear. It is really important that
that role is of high quality, is an expert, is able to assess
63 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
suitability and risk for various different interventions,
and is then able to manage that risk. That is an important
part of it.
Quality assurance is key, and you know that Respect
has a set of standards for perpetrator work. When new
interventions come up, we have to flex those standards
and think about what is appropriate for the new types of
work. It is really important that there is quality assurance
around the DAPOs and the role. That means really
thinking hard about what those positive requirements
might be. Is it a range of requirements? What I would
like to see, and what we have advised the Home Office
on already, is not just having a one-size-fits-all short
intervention, which I think is the risk, but having at
your disposal the kind of things we have talked about
already that Drive has got. You could just say, “You can
go on this behaviour change programme for six weeks,”
or something like that, but if someone is not suitable for
a behaviour change programme because they are resistant
to change and their lifestyle is chaotic, there is no point
putting them on one. They will sabotage the whole
process for everyone who wants to be on it. In that case,
the disrupt and the case management element of Drive
would be suitable.
I would like the DAPO to have the flexibility to be
able to say, “You are suitable for this and this, but not
this, this and this.” Obviously, it all takes resource to be
able to do those assessments. I am plugging the call to
action and strategy on perpetrators, but if the Government
were able to comprehensively write a strategy on
perpetrators, it would cover all those things, ensure a
range of activities and have to be in every geographical
area, and that is a real challenge; that is really resource-
intensive, but I think you would see results.
We know the costs of domestic abuse are astronomical—I
am sure everyone in this room knows the £66 billion a
year figure that the Home Office published earlier in the
year. I do not think the public realise that £66 million is
frittered away on the social and economic impacts of
domestic abuse. If we were to use some of that money
in a proactive and strategic way to address the cause
of the problem—the perpetrator—we would start to get
somewhere.
Q108 Carolyn Harris: We know that victims change
the way that they behave to stop a perpetrator abusing
them. What can we put into legislation to put the
emphasis on change on the perpetrator and not the
victim?
Jo Todd: Some of it—some of the things I have
mentioned—goes alongside the legislation. Domestic
abuse legislation is focused on responding to abuse that
has already happened, which of course is really important,
but we need to prevent it from happening or stop it
happening again if it has already started. That is hard
to put into legislation. Some things have been suggested,
such as polygraph testing—that is in the Bill at the
moment.
I think you could spend your money a lot more wisely
than on polygraph testing, and really think about GPS
tracking. It has been piloted around the world, but in
Spain in particular, and has been very successful. In
case you do not know, because technology has moved
on so much and we are all running to keep up with it,
the tags that people on probation can have when they
are released into the community can restrict them from
Domestic Abuse Bill 64
going into wide geographical areas. You can put protections
around victims, such as a 10-mile radius, or saying that
he is not allowed in a certain town or cannot go where
the school, the hospital or her mum’s house is, and all
the travel in between those places. You can programme
those tags. I would like money to be put into those
kinds of things. If probation took forward technological
advances, that would be really interesting to pilot, rather
than polygraph testing. I didn’t know if anyone would
ask me about that, so I thought I would get it in.
I keep coming back to quality assurance, but if I was
putting anything into the Bill, it would be around the
standards for work with perpetrators and the commissioning
guidance around that. At the moment, commissioners
are sometimes flailing. They want to do the right thing, but
they have limited budgets. It is great when commissioners
take notice of our standards—quite a lot do—but they
are not compelled to, so some do not. Standards that
are looking at safe and effective practice need more
money than quick, cheap options.
I would look at putting an amendment in the Bill on
quality assurance in perpetrator work. I have had a
conversation today with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner
on how that might fit with her role and with her
oversight. There is still a bit of thinking to do about
that, so I would be happy to take that forward with the
Home Office, although we have all been watching the
news today and are not sure where we will be in a few
weeks’ time, but the positive thing is that everyone—in
this room, it is a cross-party group—wants to take this
Bill forward. Whoever ends up in government, and
whatever form of Government we end up with, I am
hoping will take forward the Bill. Again, that is something
that the sector would appreciate some reassurance on.
We will all be knocking on the doors of the people
writing the manifestos really soon, to get some of the
things that we want from the Bill into manifestos. You
will be expecting us, I am sure. Does that answer your
question?
Q109 Carolyn Harris: Yes, that is brilliant—I will
give you a rest now. Ms McCarron, we have already
discussed—something that came as a huge shock to
me—that we do not keep stats for victims over 74 years
of age, which is obviously something we have to look at
remedying. How do we gather the data? What can we do
to ensure that we have ways of identifying elderly people
who are victims of domestic violence? Is it as simple as
an IDVA—an independent domestic violence adviser—in
a casualty unit? What can we do?
Emily McCarron: I am not a statistician, so I cannot
advise on the exact statistical methods, but there are
opportunities with IDVAs, as you imply. We are also
trying to raise the opportunity within the healthcare
setting to better detect where domestic abuse of older
people is occurring. Admission and discharge are critical
points, when the experience of domestic abuse of older
people can be picked up by healthcare professionals, so
that is an opportunity potentially for data to be collected
on, or certainly for more understanding of, the incidence
of domestic abuse. That is why—for that point—we are
calling for healthcare professionals to receive specific
and ongoing training so that they can identify when
domestic abuse is occurring, and so that they can better
support older people.
65 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019
The same goes for IDVAs. We know that only 5% of
the people who seek support from IDVAs are over the
age of 60, which is extremely low, so there is an opportunity
here also to boost that role, particularly in the healthcare
setting, where older people are likely to turn up with
domestic abuse issues. Many older people are perhaps
reliant financially or physically on perpetrators for financial
or care support, and go to GP appointments with the
perpetrator perhaps, but when they go to hospital,
perhaps alone for the first time, there is an opportunity
to intervene, to see what is going on and to see what
support can be provided.
Q110 Carolyn Harris: Do you know that in Wales
there is quite a big training programme on domestic
violence training? Is it better in Wales, because we have
more people trained to identify victims?
Emily McCarron: I cannot comment on the specific
situation in Wales. We have identified a gap overall in
the NHS, which could be providing much more training—or
there is an opportunity for those healthcare professionals
to intervene and to provide support, as well as to
identify.
Q111 Sarah Newton: Actually, I can answer your
question, Carolyn. Yes, it is very good in Wales, because
they have compulsory IRIS—Identification and Referral
to Improve Safety—training in the NHS, which is definitely
something we should do in the England NHS. That is
why they have got the highest detection rates in the UK
of domestic abuse among older people.
Emily, you gave us very good written evidence on a
different type of domestic abuse for older people from
what we have been talking about. We have very much
been talking about intimate partners, and this is really
about adult family members abusing the older members
of their family, or people with disabilities in their family.
Perhaps you could talk to us a bit about what you know
about that and the prevalence of it. What more do we
need to do to reflect on it? For the first time, that type of
domestic abuse is being captured in legislation.
Emily McCarron: We know that domestic abuse is a
gendered crime. However, at Age UK we receive about
two calls a day from older people, their families and
their support about this issue. Older men and women,
as they age, are more likely to experience domestic
abuse at the hands of family members—not just intimate
partners. Older people are almost equally as likely to be
killed by a partner or spouse as by their adult children
or grandchildren. We are very pleased to see the definition
of domestic abuse expanded, particularly with regard to
the inclusion of statutory inquiries into suspected financial
abuse, which is very relevant to older people.
We would like that definition to be expanded further
so that it recognises the whole array of family relationships
and the complexities and vulnerabilities that arise in
those relationships as a person ages and their care needs
develop and change. We are calling for the definition
to be expanded to include abuse that is perpetrated
not just by family members and intimate partners, but
carers, because they provide care in a domestic setting
to a person whose vulnerability has increased as they
have aged. That is why we are calling for the definition
to be expanded. We must recognise that older people
experience domestic abuse not just at the hands of
intimate partners; it is a new array of family members,
neighbours, friends and carers.
Domestic Abuse Bill 66
Q112 Vernon Coaker: Emily, could you say a little
about the difficulty with elderly people disclosing the
fact that they are victims of this sort of abuse, and how
difficult that must be? This morning, somebody raised
the issue of older people, and I think this is a problem
as you get older—hopefully, younger people have a
different attitude, which is that you don’t suffer in
silence. Have you made any estimate of the number of
people that this affects? What initiatives have you found
that have made a difference? What can we do about it,
given that it is not only physical abuse and the economic
abuse that Sarah was just talking about, but emotional
abuse, control and those sorts of things?
Emily McCarron: You are right to say that older
people often suffer in silence because they face a range
of barriers to reporting the abuse. In many instances, it
might be that they have suffered from the abuse for a
very long time and are simply resigned to it or feel that
no one is really listening to them. They might be very
frightened. It is also the case that some older people
have cognitive and physical decline, which makes it
much harder to report. We know that there are very few
services available to older people. We have reports from
older people that they think that domestic abuse services
are not for them; they think they are for younger
women and do not want to take up the places of
younger women and children, so are reluctant to report
the abuse. It is also due to fear and a reliance on
people financially. In many instances, they might not
want to leave the perpetrator, so it is about what the
correct response to that person’s needs is. That is why
we are calling for a better response from healthcare
professionals.
As it stands, the Bill is very focused on the criminal
justice response, and that may not always be the only
response that is right for older people. We are calling for
better co-ordination and links between the criminal
justice system, the healthcare system and local authorities,
for a more co-ordinated response that is also linked up
to social care, which obviously plays a part.
We are also calling for greater links with local authorities.
At the moment, the possibility of domestic abuse is not
always fully considered in assessments under the Care
Act 2014, so we are calling for a better understanding of
it. Certainly some successful training programmes have
been delivered specifically to train people up on the
needs of older people, because it is not always the
criminal justice response that is needed.
Q113 Huw Merriman: Emily, may I take you back to
your suggestion that the definition be widened to include
carers? I can absolutely see the logic of that, but is there
not a danger? Currently, “personally connected”effectively
means being or having been in a relationship or being a
relative. If you extended that to carers, why would you
not extend it to people who provide paid services to the
home, for example? There is a danger that you go from
“personally connected” towards “comes into contact”.
Where would you stop? I wonder if you have thought
about that in terms of extending the definition.
Emily McCarron: We have. We see that there is a role
for the Care Quality Commission to play in ensuring
sufficient safeguards for professionals who provide paid
professional care. We are going on the evidence we see
at Age UK, on what the calls to our information and
67 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
advice service tell us, and on case studies. We are seeing
that, in addition to intimate partner abuse, older people
raise concerns about the abuse they experience at the
hands of unpaid carers. I can see that there would be
some concerns about how far that goes, but we are just
going on the evidence.
We see that older people are experiencing abuse at the
hands of their carers. As I have said, that is related to
their vulnerabilities, and often that person is the only
person who they see—they are not in contact with
many other people. We are seeing evidence of the same
coercive control and of older people adapting their
behaviour to deal with the abuse that they experience—for
example, sticking to their rooms and avoiding all conflict.
That is exactly the same pattern of abuse and coercive
control that we see in other examples of domestic abuse.
That is really what is driving our desire for this amendment
to expand the definition of abuse.
Q114 Huw Merriman: Clearly, this is an area that you
would think needs addressing. Did you consider whether
there are other vehicles to address that point or is this
neatly fitting?
Emily McCarron: I do not think that it is ever neat—I
do not necessarily think that anything fits neatly into
this area. There are other opportunities beyond the Bill.
There are opportunities to look at the guidance for the
Care Act and how we address that. There are also
discussions around the definition of coercive control
and whether that is always in the domestic setting. The
Bill provides an opportunity to improve the lives of
older people who are experiencing domestic abuse. That
is why we are focusing on this as a vehicle to make some
change and have some relevance to the lives of older
people who are experiencing abuse.
Q115 Gillian Keegan: There is no doubt that this is a
very big area that is relatively new in terms of our
considering it. As you say, older people are definitely
much more vulnerable, particularly with regard to intimate
care. They are much more isolated, and I guess they are
more conscious and concerned about loneliness too,
which could be the consequences of taking any action. I
have encountered a number of distressing cases involving
either carers and the abuse of elderly victims, or other
residents abusing people’s relatives in care homes. Obviously,
the Government want to ensure that we get this right
and make domestic abuse everybody’s business in order
to try to identify and help victims, and I suppose that is
even more critical with elderly people. What do you
think needs to change to ensure that the response to
older victims is as good as it can be? How do you see the
role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in helping
us on that journey?
Emily McCarron: The first step is the need to correctly
identify that this is happening. A budget of £100,000
was allocated to support older people experiencing
domestic abuse. While we are certainly not arguing for
resources to be diverted away from younger people, that
indicated to us that this is not recognised as an issue. In
part, as I have explained, that is a data issue: we just do
not quite know how many older people experience
domestic abuse. We have quite a stark figure that one in
four victims of domestic homicides are over the age
Domestic Abuse Bill 68
of 60. We believe that is a consequence of the fact
that older people are not accessing the services they
need.
Really, this is about recognising that this is an issue
for older people, that it is quite a hidden issue, that more
needs to be done and that their particular needs must be
recognised in terms of the response. The response should
not just be a criminal justice response; it should also be
about healthcare, social care, housing and the provision
of services. On asking the commissioner, this is about
recognising the issue and allocating resources—or the
Government response—in accordance with the number
of older people who experience it. It is quite a stark
issue, but it is still very hidden.
Q116 The Chair: Are there any further Members who
wish to ask questions of the witnesses? If not, is there
anything you wish to add that the Committee has not
covered?
Jo Todd: I would like to mention something about
culture change. It is really easy to focus on individuals.
The Bill is a real opportunity for the Government and
society to reflect on what it is to have a healthy relationship.
That is about equality. A lot of the reason we talk about
gender all the time is that domestic abuse is a cause and
a consequence of women’s inequality. There is a broader
landscape around this issue. I think addressing that,
alongside the measures we are looking at in terms of
individuals, would help a lot. If we are talking about
individual relationships, shared decision making, and
having equality in the relationship, an unhealthy and
abusive relationship is where there is an expectation of
one partner having control and power in the relationship,
and that their entitlement to make decisions for the
family and for the other people in the relationship
overrides everything else. We increasingly recognise that
it is the control at the heart of an abusive relationship
that is the problem, and the violence or abuse—economic
abuse or whatever it is—is just a part of the mechanism
for maintaining control.
So there is a bigger piece of work—it was mentioned
earlier—about Government campaigns. There really is
a mixed method approach to trying to shift the society
we live in and the views that we all have, whether it is the
older or younger generation. We are all from different
generations in this room, and there is no generation that
has got this right, so there needs to be a national
dialogue about what healthy relationships are so that
everyone knows what they are. And there needs to be
campaigning targeted at perpetrators, or people who
might end up as perpetrators, that gives very clear
messages.
The Met police did a campaign probably 12 or 15 years
ago that was directed at perpetrators. They put it on
tube platforms and it had a really positive recognition
rate among men. Media testing of how campaigns had
worked found that it had a really positive impact, but
we have not seen much since that is aimed at perpetrators.
When you think about the Bill, I encourage you to think
about a broader package of what the Government can
achieve. We want services and the statutory response to
victims, perpetrators and children to be as good as they
can be, but we also need the wider conversation to
happen.
Q117 The Chair: Any final word, Emily, before we
conclude?
69 Public Bill Committee 29 OCTOBER 2019 Domestic Abuse Bill 70

Emily McCarron: I have been talking about older
people and in particular a response to domestic abuse
that moves beyond the criminal justice response. Although
we have advocated for the needs of older people, looking
at healthcare, housing, social care, the local authority
response and the need for a multi-agency response and
better co-ordination, this does not only benefit older
people; it benefits all those who experience domestic
abuse. There is a real opportunity for the Bill to meet
those needs and bring real change.
The Chair: I am grateful to the two witnesses for their
contributions, which brings us to the end of the proceedings
for oral evidence today.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.
—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
4.38 pm
Adjourned till Thursday 31 October at half-past Eleven
o’clock.
71 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS Domestic Abuse Bill 72

Written evidence reported to the House DAB05 Prison Reform Trust

DAB01 Transform Justice DAB06 The ManKind Initiative
DAB07 Dogs Trust
DAB02 Equi-law UK
DAB08 Dr Tirion Havard, Senior Lecturer at London
DAB03 Amnesty International UK South Bank University
DAB04 Step Up Migrant Women Coalition DAB09 Refugee Council
 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
HOUSE OF COMMONS
OFFICIAL REPORT
GENERAL COMMITTEES

Public Bill Committee

DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL

Third Sitting

Thursday 31 October 2019

CONTENTS
Motion not to proceed with further consideration of the Bill agreed to.
Motion to agree to Special Report agreed to.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
Written evidence reported to the House.

PBC (Bill 002) 2019 - 2020

 No proofs can be supplied. Corrections that Members suggest for the
final version of the report should be clearly marked in a copy of
the report—not telephoned—and must be received in the Editor’s
Room, House of Commons,

not later than

Monday 4 November 2019

© Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2019

This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament licence,
which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/.
73 Public Bill Committee 31 OCTOBER 2019 Domestic Abuse Bill 74

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: SIR DAVID AMESS, † DAVID HANSON

† Atkins, Victoria (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for the Home Department)
Coaker, Vernon (Gedling) (Lab)
† Dakin, Nic (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
† Graham, Luke (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
† Harris, Carolyn (Swansea East) (Lab)
Hughes, Eddie (Walsall North) (Con)
Jardine, Christine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Johnson, Diana (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
† Jones, Mr Marcus (Nuneaton) (Con)
† Keegan, Gillian (Chichester) (Con)
† Merriman, Huw (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
† Morton, Wendy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for Justice)
Newton, Sarah (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Norris, Alex (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Saville Roberts, Liz (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
† Scully, Paul (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
Smith, Eleanor (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Joanna Dodd, Rob Page, Committee Clerks
† attended the Committee
75 Public Bill Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS
Public Bill Committee
Thursday 31 October 2019
[MR DAVID HANSON in the Chair]
Domestic Abuse Bill
11.30 am
The Chair: Because of the impending general election,
Committee proceedings have changed today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the
Home Department (Victoria Atkins): I beg to move,
That the Committee do not proceed further with the consideration
of the Bill.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship,
Mr Hanson, albeit briefly. Following the decision of the
House to hold a general election, it is only right that a
Public Bill Committee in the new Parliament should
scrutinise the Bill thoroughly. The motion before the
Committee therefore removes the sittings up to Dissolution.
The witnesses who were due to give evidence today
have, of course, been notified.
This vital piece of legislation has the potential to help
2 million victims of domestic abuse in this country. I
want to reassure victims, survivors and all who work
with them that the Government will continue with this
legislation in the next Parliament. I thank the Clerks for
their assiduous work, and I thank the Badge Messengers,
Hansard and the Bill team. I thank colleagues—even in
one day, they showed their attention to detail with our
witnesses—and I thank the witnesses who gave evidence.
I thank my fellow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member
Domestic Abuse Bill 76
for Aldridge-Brownhills, as well as the shadow Minister,
the Opposition Whip and my own Whip—I have learned
that lesson. Finally, I thank you, Mr Hanson, and
Sir David for chairing our Committee, albeit briefly.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): On behalf of
the Opposition, I, too, extend thanks to the Clerks, the
Chairmen, the Committee staff and Committee members
for their attendance. This is a really important Bill. It is
only right that we make this decision, but we look
forward to returning to the Bill straight after the general
election.
Victoria Atkins: I do apologise; I must also thank my
wonderful officials, who have worked so hard. I thank
them very much indeed.
The Chair: I add that the Scrutiny Unit has also done
a good job in preparing a range of detailed information.
None of the work that has been done in preparation
for this Bill will be lost, because, as the Minister said, it
will be revisited. We will see which Members are on a
Committee in due course. I wish everybody every success
for the future.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chair: The Committee must now agree a special
report to be made to the House.
Ordered,
That the Committee agree the Special Report as on the paper
before the Committee and that the Chair do report the Bill to the
House.
Bill accordingly to be reported, without amendment.
11.33 am
Committee rose.
77 Public Bill Committee 31 OCTOBER 2019 Domestic Abuse Bill 78

Written evidence reported to the House DAB14 Brian Maloney

DAB10 Children’s Commissioner DAB15 The Magistrates Association
DAB11 Changing Lives DAB16 Andrew Todd
DAB12 SafeLives DAB17 Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk
DAB18 Parity
DAB13 Nagalro (the Professional Association for Children’s
Guardians, Family Court Advisers and Independent DAB19 Centre for Women’s Justice
Social Workers) DAB20 Refuge